“I don’t think you’re foolish,” Alex said. “I have a feeling you downloaded that photo somewhere. Just for safekeeping.”
Another wary pause from Janet.
“My guess is that you were, shall we say, one step ahead of them,” Alex continued. “You don’t have to admit it out loud. Just nod if I’m right.”
Several seconds passed. Janet nodded.
“Where is it?” Alex asked. “Stored in cyberspace maybe?”
Janet grimaced and pulled a new iPod out of her backpack. She fired it up and brought up the photograph. She handed the iPod to Alex.
Alex looked down and, on a two-by-three-inch screen saw the photo from the Royale in Cairo. The figures were too small to be of any value to the naked eye. The iPod was big-screen only if the viewer was a mouse. But Alex saw a small snapshot of two men facing and one, the Cerny clone, with his back to her.
Alex looked back up. “Does anyone else know you have this?” she asked.
“Just you and my uncle.”
“I need to copy this,” Alex said.
“Please be careful,” Janet begged again.
“I’m not going to put it through any intelligence system or computer network at work. If Mike Cerny is alive, who knows what’s compromised and where? I just want to run it to my own iPod. All right? Please say yes.”
Janet looked to Don Tomás, who nodded. “Yes,” she said to Alex.
“I have a few people whom I know I can trust. They’re outside of Treasury and the CIA. They’re not even American. They might be able to help me, help you, while keeping their own hands personally on an inquiry. If there’s anything to this, that’s the route I might have to go.”
Janet trembled. “Use your judgment,” she said.
Alex nodded. “Now,” she said. “Let’s go back into my apartment and see if those eavesdropping devices are there. If they are there, we should leave them. No use alerting anyone now.”
“None,” Don Tomás said.
“Let’s go have a look,” Alex said.
“Should I stay or wait?” the retired diplomat said.
Alex gave him a wink. “Join the party,” she said. “No one say anything. We’ll just have a look.”
They went out into the hall, which remained quiet.
They crossed the hall and closed the door.
Two minutes later, Nagib emerged from the service stairs that led from the garage. He walked down the hallway, his pistol under his coat. He arrived at the doorways to 505 and 506.
He stood outside, listened, and waited. Then somewhere in the distance, he heard some sort of alarm go off.
EIGHTEEN
Janet’s recall was encyclopedic when it came to devices that she had planted. She could recall all of them, where in a room she had put one, what had been the problems of location.
She had entered the apartment behind Alex, then stepped slightly ahead.
In this case, it all seemed so simple. Janet went down to her hands and knees on the living room floor, then turned slightly to an angle as she neared a coffee table that stood in front of a sofa. Alex followed her to the floor while Don Tomás was content to stand and watch.
Janet reached under the coffee table and quietly extended an index finger. Alex was next to her on the floor and positioned her head so she could see under the table. Her finger pointed to the listening device, still clamped exactly where she had put it several months earlier.
Janet turned toward Alex and said nothing. Alex nodded, not with anger but with understanding. Then Janet sprung up again and went to the bedroom. They repeated the on-the-floor guidance. Janet showed Alex the transmitter that had been wedged under the headboard of her bed.
Alex nodded. They left everything in place and returned to Don Tomás’s apartment. Down the hall, they heard Mrs. Rothman’s smoke alarm going off. They didn’t speak again until they were inside with the door closed.
“That deaf old bat doesn’t even hear her own smoke alarm,” Don Tomás muttered. “Can you believe that?”
But Janet was still dwelling on the electronic snooping.
“I’m sorry,” Janet said to Alex. “I had a job to do. Nothing personal.”
“I understand,” Alex said. “You’re forgiven. You had a job to do and you did it.” She paused. “Same as myself.”
“Oh, and there’s one other thing,” Janet said. “I mentioned it to the interrogators. They laughed at me and said it was impossible. But I’ll mention it to you.”
Alex waited.
“The three men in the bar in Cairo,” she said. “Carlos got close enough to eavesdrop. He could hear them, but he couldn’t tell what they were saying. At the time he didn’t know what language they were speaking. Then afterward, he realized what it was.”
“What was it?” Alex asked.
“Russian,” she said. “The day before he died, Carlos said he was sure. They were talking Russian.”
A few minutes later Alex was at the door. She stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
From somewhere there was a noise in the hall. She turned around, looked in each direction, but saw nothing.
She reentered her own apartment. It was past 1:00 a.m.
She knew already that she was going to be sleep-deprived the next day. She would be dragging herself around as if she were dead.
On the street five stories below, Nagib and Rashaad were arguing furiously. Someone on the fifth floor had set off a smoke alarm. Around the corner from where he stood, vulnerable to view, doors began to open and a few people walked into the hall. Nagib had turned immediately and left, rather than be seen.
Rashaad was furious. The longer that it took to get the job done, the more chance that things would go wrong. They departed again, with their assignment still unfulfilled.
NINETEEN
Late the next morning Alex arrived at Mike Gamburian’s door and found it half open. She knocked. Gamburian looked up from his desk. “Hey, Alex,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Got a couple of minutes?”
“For you, always. Two, three, maybe even four and a half.”
There were a trio of hardcopy classified folders on his desk. Alex could tell by the bold red binders. He flipped all three shut as she pushed the door closed and sat down.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked.
“I had a meeting in New York two nights ago with Yuri Federov,” she said. “But you knew that.”
“Of course. How’s our old friend Yuri?”
“He’s been better in his life. In fact, I can’t figure out if he’s got a serious health problem of some sort.”