The evidence was damning, yet it still took him two more days to accept the obvious. While “love” was a word he still struggled to use, he soon realized that his unspoken feelings for Sophie had been clouding his judgement. The facts couldn’t be ignored: His lover’s husband was a traitor. He thought of that undercover agent whose mutilated body had festered under the desert sun. How many other agents had been killed or kidnapped because of Emmett’s misdeeds? Stan’s own mideeds paled to insignificance, and he lost all sympathy for Emmett Kohl. He even allowed himself to hate.
He waited for Emmett on a street near the embassy. It was a warm day, and Sophie’s husband looked harried. Stan asked about The Nutcracker, and Emmett gave a noncommittal shrug. “Take a walk with me, will you?” Stan asked as he led him down a sweltering Cairo alley he had scouted beforehand, to a little courtyard café with yellow paint peeling off of old stone walls. Emmett had grown anxious by then, but Stan reassured him with aimless talk about personal problems he desperately needed help with until, finally, they were sitting across from each other at one of the plastic tables.
Neither of them had a lot of time—end-of-the-month meetings were filling both of their schedules—so Stan didn’t bother easing into it. He showed Emmett the photographs of his meeting with Balašević and a CD-ROM that he assured him proved that Emmett had been loading secret files onto his laptop. “Jesus,” Emmett said, seeming to shrink before Stan’s eyes.
“This is about as serious as it gets,” Stan told him.
Emmett looked like a little boy who was going to be sick, his round, smooth face preternaturally young. Hiding his contempt, Stan reached across the table and patted Emmett’s hand.
“Just consider yourself lucky that I’m the one who discovered it.”
Emmett couldn’t manage an answer.
“Let’s start with who this woman is.”
He gave Stan the name he already knew, Zora Balašević, then the name of her employer: BIA, the Security Information Agency.
“You want to tell me what she has on you?”
A firm shake of the head. For the moment, it didn’t matter. “But I refused,” Emmett said.
Despite himself, Stan let a smile slip into his face. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Listen, Emmett. I don’t need to come to you with this. The information you gave her didn’t sit around in the Serbian embassy—it traveled. The Serbs sold it on to at least three different governments. By now it’s common knowledge. With what I’ve got, Harry can send you home in shackles.”
His eyes had grown into saucers. “I’m telling you, Stan. I didn’t give her anything. She asked—threatened, really—but I refused.”
People lie. During his ten years with the Agency Stan had listened to more lies than he could count, and he’d lied at least the same number of times. Being his father’s son, he was pretty good at it, but in his experience diplomatic staff were among the most skillful liars around. So it was no surprise that Emmett told him these things with a straight face. He went on to say that, yes, he’d brought home his work, even brought home material that wasn’t supposed to leave the embassy. “I’m loose with the rules. I’ll admit to that. But I’m not a traitor.”
“What does Balašević have on you?”
“It doesn’t matter, Stan. That was a year ago. She asked, I said no—end of story.”
“Then why didn’t you report it?”
“Because I didn’t know you. I didn’t know Harry. I was worried about my job.”
Stan gave him a good long stare to show that he wasn’t buying any of this. He said, “You’re going to close it down. Tell her the truth—you were uncovered, and now it’s all over.”
“It never started.”
“I’m trying to close a leak, Emmett. I’m not here to abuse you. I’m not even going to make you feed them disinformation—the Serbs aren’t worth it. But you have to be open with me. What you need to do now is admit it to me.” He opened his hands. “I’m not carrying a wire, I swear. You and I just need to come to an understanding. You admit what you’ve done, and I promise to control the fallout. But I’ll only do that if I know it’s over. Right here and now. Am I making myself clear?”
It was Emmett’s turn to stare, turning over his options, examining them from different angles. He gave a long exhale and said, “I don’t know how many ways I can say this. I gave away nothing.”
“This isn’t a game, Emmett. One of our men was killed because of what you did. Understand? If you don’t give me what I need, then I’m taking this to Harry. Got it?”
Emmett understood perfectly. He chewed the inside of his cheek, leaned back, and, frowning, finally said what Stan had never thought he would have the courage to say: “Why haven’t you gone to Harry about this? If it’s so goddamned serious, then why are we having coffee and a chat? I mean, look. Maybe I’m not the brightest bulb in the store, but I’m wondering why I’m not on a plane back to D.C. If your evidence is so damned ironclad.” When Stan didn’t answer immediately, he leaned closer. “You don’t want to bring this to Harry. Why?”
Because I’m sleeping with your wife! he wanted to scream. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about Emmett Kohl, but if Emmett was sent home his wife would follow him back to the States—he feared that even more than a leak in the embassy. Instead, he controlled himself. He answered Emmett’s lies with his own.
“Emmett, you and I are friends. I happen to place some importance on such things, so don’t try to take advantage of me. Right now you have two options. You can do as I ask and return to your life. Don’t worry about Balašević. If she knows you’re blown, she won’t use whatever she has on you—she’ll step back. Or you can go on with what you’re doing, and we can both find out how many days it takes for me to drop friendship in favor of duty.”
Emmett spent another minute thinking about this, his expression drifting between moods that Stan could not interpret. Then he raised his head and looked squarely at his accuser. He smiled, nodded, and stood up. “Thanks for the coffee,” Emmett said before walking away.
At three in the morning one year later, still sticky with sleep, Stan listened to Sophie: “We were having dinner and a man walked into the restaurant and shot him in the head and the chest.” Then the conversation was over, and he poured himself a drink—the first sip was a toast to Emmett Kohl, but the second became a toast to Emmett Kohl’s passing, and it took a while to shake the terrible pleasure this news had given him.
When it finally did leave him, he called Harry Wolcott to pass on the news. Though Harry had also been asleep, he sounded sharp, asking why Sophie had thought to call him of all people at that hour.
“She scrolled through her phone, and my name was the first she came across,” Stan lied—smoothly and without self-consciousness, the way his father would have.
“The mind of a woman is an unfathomable thing,” Harry told him, as if that could explain a lifetime of confusion regarding the opposite sex. “Let me make the announcement, all right? I’ll call Budapest for details and share everything in the morning.”