“I wonder if you could set something up,” Voltaire said midway into the voyage back to Cairo. “A meeting between you, me, and Fitzgerald from the embassy. We need to get together face-to-face at least once. We both have information to convey to each other and to you. I don’t want any electronics involved. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to access Fitzgerald. So can you set something up?”
“I could do that,” Alex said. “How soon?”
“Tomorrow?”
“It could be done, I’m sure,” she said.
“Needless to say,” he said, “I never set foot in that embassy or any other. In my persona of Monsieur Lamara, why would I? So we need to have a neutral site, someplace above suspicion.”
She thought about it for a moment. “We were surrounded by desert today, right?” she said.
“As I recall,” he said.
“Then tomorrow we’ll be surrounded by water,” she said. “How would that be?”
“I like the way you think,” he said. “So we’re going to meet on a papyrus raft on the Nile?”
“I was thinking more prosaic,” she said. “The pool area of the hotel.”
“That would work for me,” Voltaire said.
There was entertainment on the boat, planned and unplanned. They had live music, and then a belly dancer appeared when they were halfway to Cairo. Alex, who had never been to a belly dancing show before, looked at it with great amusement, and wondered if the dancer was enjoying it as much as she seemed to be. The Egyptian girl flirted with every man in the place, getting reams of dollar bills tucked into the waistband of her skirt and getting her exercise as well.
Voltaire fell into conversation with some wealthy Egyptians who had brought relatives from Europe to see Giza. This dancer was better than average, the Egyptians said. And at the same time, Alex noted Voltaire’s technique. He was always striking up conversations, keeping his ear to the ground, being friendly with everyone. He must have picked up tons of information and scuttlebutt that way. He was good at what he did.
In any case, Voltaire liked the dancer a little too much. He enjoyed playing the buffoon tourist instead of the master spy. He got up and danced opposite her and then rewarded her by sticking a US twenty-dollar bill in her skirt. In doing so, he had set a tone for the evening and loosened up the crowd for even heavier tips. She would go into the crowd and grab other victims and drag them up to the stage to dance with her too, which caused most of the excitement. She seemed to specialize in victimizing Americans and did well at it, innocent as it was. She gave Voltaire a wink and a kiss on the forehead when she finished her show and swept past.
Later on the boat ride, Alex and Voltaire talked with an Egyptian man who spoke nearly flawless English. He was berating everything from Mubarak, to Obama, to the captain of the ship, to the French woman standing next to him who seemed to be his wife.
Ever the diplomat, Voltaire agreed with everything he said, except that he offered high praise to the bearing and patience of the French lady. As the ship docked, the day seemed to have acquired a surreal tone to Alex. In some ways, she was a little kid again. She couldn’t believe that she had seen and touched and even entered the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the oldest and largest pyramid in Egypt.
Off the boat, Alex spotted a familiar face waiting for them.
Tony with his cab and, presumably, his artillery.
Abdul ducked away into the chilly night, and Tony was back on duty.
FORTY-THREE
Like any fine hotel, the lobby of the Metropole boasted an arcade of overpriced specialty stores catering to the hotel’s international clientele. Alex visited the shopping area the next morning and found what she was looking for. A plain navy-blue maillot to use in the hotel’s vast swimming pool. A size ten was a perfect fit and the suit flattered her. Not too sexy, but not too demure. It would work.
Toward 1:30, she went to the well-guarded pool area behind the hotel. She entered the water on the shallow end and began doing laps, a small fresh bandage on the scar on her arm. At least she could combine some exercise with business. Despite showering and washing well the night before, the parched atmosphere of the desert remained upon her. The water soothed her.
She completed a brisk ten laps, watching the other visitors to the pool as she swam. She saw Richard Bissinger enter the hotel’s pool area, using the guest pass that she had left for him at the front desk. She continued to do laps as Bissinger, or Fitzgerald, disappeared into a bathhouse at the far end of the pool.
Voltaire, she noted, didn’t need a pass. He apparently had whatever access he needed to anything he wanted all over the Middle East. He arrived a few minutes after Bissinger but, wearing a pair of shorts suitable for swimming, was faster at getting into the water. He stood at the shallow end and waited for her.
Bissinger emerged from a locker area and slipped into the pool. He moved to the area where Voltaire stood. Alex did a final lap, then emerged and grabbed a towel and a pair of sunglasses off her deck chair. Then she joined her two visitors in waist-deep water.
It was midday and the pool was otherwise deserted, other than children and nannies. The children, splashing and screaming, formed a perfect acoustical backdrop to make electronic eavesdropping on them impossible, even via a rifle mike aimed from a hotel window.
“I’ve been to meetings that were all wet before,” Bissinger said. “But to actually be in a pool is a first.”
“You should thank me for getting you out of the office,” Alex said, standing and pushing back her hair. She toweled her shoulders and let the towel hang across them.
“I do,” he said.
“Everyone knows everyone,” she said. “I already know that. So what are the signals we need to get straight?”
“It seems that a certain someone in whom we have an interest,” Bissinger said, “ ‘Judas,’ has just made a move.”
“What sort of move?” Alex asked.
“As I understand it, he smelled danger here in Cairo, or maybe a better opportunity somewhere else, and departed from this wonderful country.”
Against her normal habit, Alex swore emphatically. She had traveled all this way for no resolution?
“Where is he?” Voltaire asked.
“Tel Aviv,” said Bissinger. “Or so we think.”
“Ha! Well, that’s not far, is it?” Voltaire asked. “Although the jurisdictional problems just increased.”
“So is our operation scuttled?” she asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” Bissinger said. “Look, here’s what else we know about Judas. In addition to his actual passport under his real name, he has at least four others. Two are Russian, a pair of solid forgeries that he seems to have picked up from his business associates. Then he’s got a British and a Hungarian.”