“I am,” she said. “A practicing Christian.”
“I’m not anything.”
“I can tell.”
“That damns my soul to hell, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“It’s a theory,” she said.
He laughed. “You’re good. Sharp. Hungry?”
“A bit. Is food an option?”
“Sometimes.” He signaled a waiter. The establishment had kebabs, a chicken couscous, and something called a bisteeya, which Voltaire suggested.
“What is it?” she asked.
“It’s a flaky pastry concocted from almonds, dates, and pigeon.”
“Pigeon? Like underfoot in New York?” she asked. “Feathered rats?”
“Very similar. Hemingway survived on them when he was struggling in Paris after World War I. Try one.”
“I’m not struggling, I’m not in Paris, and I’ll have a kabob,” she said. “Lamb, not mutton, right? And with rice.”
“As you request,” Voltaire said. “If they bring salad, don’t touch it. That’s how you get dysentery.”
To be clear, Voltaire translated the order into crisp Arabic. The waiter nodded, smiled, and disappeared.
“Very good,” Voltaire said. His eyes swept the room. “You’ve got some sass to you too. That helps. How do you feel about seducing a man you’ve never previously met.”
“Depends on who he is, what he looks like, and where we are.”
“Good answer,” he said. “I was in the military for six years. Not with the Americans but with a Western power. I was in a branch equivalent to your US Marines. Whenever one was asked a question of logistics and wanted to hedge on the answer, one would say, ‘It depends on the situation and the terrain.’ That’s the answer you just gave.”
“This ‘seduction’?” she asked. “This ties in with an overnight with a Russian that Fitzgerald mentioned?”
“It might.”
“This seems to be emerging as a sub-specialty of mine,” she said facetiously.
“We all have our moments and our skills,” he said.
“What are yours?”
“You’ll find out as we go along,” he said. “As you need to know. But think of me as a Swiss Army knife. I have a lot of functions other than just cutting throats.”
“Which armed forces were you with?” she asked.
“If I wanted you to know that, don’t you think I would have just told you?”
“Of course,” Alex answered. “But I figured I’d give it a try.”
“You look like you’d be a real pleasure in bed,” Voltaire continued. “Sleep with me later tonight, and I’ll tell you about my army career.”
“I don’t need to know that badly. In fact, I don’t really care.”
“Good response. How many languages do you speak?” he asked.
“You’ve seen my file. You know the answer,” Alex said. “English, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and I can get by in Ukrainian. I have a limited reading knowledge of German and a familiarity with Portuguese almost by default because it overlaps so often with the other Romance languages.”
Voltaire nodded. “I speak the same languages as you do, plus Greek and Arabic, obviously, but without the bloody Ukrainian. I mention all this in case it becomes an element in our communication over the next few days.”
He paused.
“The German I speak with considerable ease,” he said. “My parents were Nazis. My father and both of his brothers were in the SS.”
He looked her up and down.
“Are you shocked?” he asked.
“Shocked? No. I’m not even surprised. And I’m certainly not impressed.”
“One of them was the commandant of a labor camp in Poland,” he said. “Very nice man as long as you weren’t a Jew, in which case he was a monster. He escaped here after the war. I rather liked Uncle Heinz, murderer though he was.”
“That’s for you to live with, not me,” she said. “Assuming there’s even a grain of truth to any of that, which I suspect there isn’t.”
He kept a tight gaze upon her, eye to eye. Then he relented and smiled. “All right,” he said. “You passed.”
“I passed what?”
“Until right now I could have rejected you as a working partner. You didn’t know that?”
“No.”
“Now you do,” he said. “I’m going to talk to Fitzgerald by phone later this evening. He’ll send you some further background files, mostly on the intelligence operations of a ‘third party’ nation that is normally friendly to the United States, but isn’t always. Any idea who that might be?”
“I could offer a short list.”
“Good. Don’t. Fitzgerald will send you files. Read them in the morning. Tomorrow we’ll meet again. Have you been out to the Pyramids of Giza?”
“Never,” she said.
“Good again. We’ll go for an open-air ride. Perfect place to talk. I’ll explain what will be expected of you. Be in front of your hotel at 3:00 p.m. Dress a little bit like a tourist if you can. Khaki is good. If you don’t have any with you, there are shops around the hotel. It will be hot in the afternoon, then cool in the evening. Khaki is perfect.”
“I brought some with me,” she said. “Work shirt, slacks, and shorts.”
“Good move. Ever ride a horse?”
“Last year in the Kentucky Derby. Finished third.”
“Brilliant, but answer me for real.”
“When I was a teenager, neighbors had horses.”
“In the US?”
“Eastern Ontario. I also worked on a ranch in France one summer. I rode there too.”
“Like it?”
“France or the horses?”
“Either,” he asked.
“Both.”
“Good,” he said. “You might be on the back of a camel tomorrow. It’s similar, just hurts more if you fall because you’re higher up. And God help you if you get kicked with a hoof.”
“You’re serious about this camel thing?”
“Completely. It goes with my cover. I’m a local businessman. I invite friends and business associates from all over the world and take them out to the tourist places. Wide open air. We can talk in complete freedom. Many of my guests are beautiful single women, so even if we are observed, nothing raises an eyebrow.”
“Got it,” she said.
“Now, tell me a bit more about yourself,” Voltaire said.
“There’s very little reason to,” she said. “You obviously know a lot about me or you wouldn’t have come here to meet me.”