“He isn’t. He’s a spy.”
She grinned. “Well. Isn’t that something?”
Sophie took her wine upstairs and sat on the bed but didn’t lie down. She was unsure what to do with herself. The food was being taken care of, and Fiona had spent much of her time tidying up the place. She remembered that there was a load of shirts in the dryer, but it seemed ridiculous to deal with that.
Yet as the minutes of her doing nothing ebbed past, she began to feel the pressure in her intestines, the discomfort, the hole.
She took the business cards out of the pocket of her slacks and looked at them. It was as if she’d been to one of Emmett’s parties, where each handshake came with one of these, everyone ready to hand out their personal details to anyone who might do their career some good. But she couldn’t do any of these people any good, not really. Not if she wanted to remain a free woman.
Is that what I am now?
The truth was that, even taking her own crimes into account, she knew nothing about what had happened to Emmett; she knew less than nothing. And if she had shared everything with the people behind these business cards, would it really have accomplished anything?
Like Gerry Davis, she was suddenly able to see the future. Rather, she saw multiple futures, and they all began with a simple decision—whether or not she would choose ignorance. All she had to do was stop asking why Emmett’s life had ended like that. Of course, she wanted to know, but how strongly did she want to know? Did she want to know so badly that she would be willing to give up everything else? Or was it better to keep her eyes closed, to let it go and return to Boston with her husband’s corpse? Let the machine of law enforcement take over. After the funeral she could change her life, maybe even for the better. Go back to school—teaching wasn’t out of the question. They had a sizable savings account, and there was another, very private account in Zurich, which she had never touched. There wasn’t much she couldn’t do. Or—and this thought came quickly—she could eventually return to Cairo and try to rekindle that joy she once felt. Not with Stan—no—but with the city itself.
Was that even possible now?
The cheapest of the business cards, laser-printed on low-quality stock, was Andras Kiraly’s. King. She wiped her eyes dry and picked up the bedroom extension and dialed. He answered after two rings like Stan—“Kiraly Andras”—reversed because Hungarians begin with their surnames.
“Mr. Kiraly, it’s Sophie Kohl.”
“Mrs. Kohl. Hello. How may I help you?”
How could he help her? It was an excellent question. But of all her visitors, she thought that he was probably her favorite. “I got the feeling,” she began, then, “I sensed during our talk that you wanted to tell me something more, and so I’m calling.”
She waited for him to speak. She didn’t know exactly how he had felt about Gerry Davis’s meddling, but she couldn’t imagine that he had liked it. Finally, he said, “Perhaps you would be interested in asking a precise question, so that I may better help you.”
There was a difference, in his mind at least, between answering questions and offering unsolicited information. So she gave it a try. “That last photograph, the one Mr. Davis didn’t want me to see. Who is he?”
By his longer pause, she guessed—and this filled her with a tingle of pleasure, her first of the day—that she’d asked something crucial. Then the silence went on, and she wondered if he’d walked away from the phone.
“Mr. Kiraly?”
“I’m here.”
“Maybe you can just tell me what his nationality is.”
“He’s American, Mrs. Kohl. I’m just looking through my papers for his information.”
American?
“Here it is. Jibril Aziz. Would you like me to spell it?”
“Please,” she said. American?
He spelled it, and she wrote in clear block capitals on the Post-it pad Emmett had always kept beside the phone.
“What does he have to do with my husband?”
“That’s unclear. Mr. Aziz was in Budapest last week, and he met twice with your husband. He came in without any diplomatic visa, or any official standing. But we were curious.”
“Why?”
“He’s an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“He’s …” There was no point repeating it. Later, she would think that this was not so strange—as deputy consul Emmett met with CIA now and then; Sophie herself had gone to bed with CIA—but at that moment it floored her. “How about the other men?”
He sighed loudly into the phone. “I could tell you their names, but none of those names are real. Their nationalities are also suspect. In fact, we know nothing about them, only that they came to Budapest around the same time as Mr. Aziz and, early last week, met with him in a bar. Your husband was not in attendance. We do not know what they talked about, or why.”
“But you have suspicions.”
An amused grunt. “Mrs. Kohl, when a group of Arab-looking men, most with false passports, meet in secret, I think you know what we suspect. But we’ve found nothing to connect them to terroristic activities.”
“Does the embassy know about this?”
“I don’t know,” he said, which Sophie took to mean that he hadn’t been sharing his information with the American embassy. He was telling her, though.
She tried to take all this in, not even sure what she was ingesting. These were not the answers she’d been looking for. In fact, they didn’t look like answers at all. She had a name, though, and that was more than she’d had before. She said, “Where is he now? Where is Jibril Aziz?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Kohl. The last we heard was that he flew to Cairo from here, but that was nearly a week ago. He could be anywhere.”
Cairo. “Is there anything else you wanted to tell me?”
“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.