He had a brief flashback of late January, when the bridges had been stages for armies of black-clad men in riot gear facing off with angry crowds trying to break through government lines to reach Tahrir. He’d mostly kept out of it, slipping out of the embassy only a few times to get a better look at the conflict. Early on, he found himself standing off to the side among government forces. Later, standing at the same corners, he found himself among the weeping, jubilant Egyptian masses as the Central Security Forces were pushed back and then scattered, running for their lives, stripping off their black uniforms. Now those same revolutionaries were walking the bridge, loitering and laughing, occupied again by the little dramas of work, life, and love. They were relentless, he thought. After millennia suffering under the heels of autocrats, from the pharaohs to the meager dictators propped up by Western investments, they were still standing, laughing and holding on to their faith. Up ahead, a line of twelve shoeless men were on their knees, facing Mecca.
He took out his phone and called Sophie but got her voice mail. He didn’t leave a message.
La Bodega was busy, but Dragan had used his considerable influence to get a secluded table in the rear booth. Yellow fin-de-siècle lighting and art nouveau furnishings enhanced the ambience, which only made Dragan Milić look more out of place. He was not the kind of man who appeared comfortable in a suit; to Stan, Dragan always looked as if he should be wearing bikini briefs and lounging beside a concrete pool in some cheap Adriatic resort, his flabby torso burned pink and his wiry gray hair bleached yellow. He smiled a lot and gestured to the world with fat fingers that ended in gnawed nails, all his words effusive. He’d known Emmett, he told Stan. Not well, “but how well do any of us know each other?” By the time the platters arrived—sea bass for him, scallops for Stan—he was on to other topics, and Stan let him go on with his complaints about the new Egyptian security services. “They’re not gentlemen anymore, Stan. You understand me?”
Dragan had obviously run into a particularly troublesome bureaucrat that morning, for most of Egypt’s security infrastructure was still intact, with the same old hands at the wheel. Yet Stan said, “I understand perfectly.”
Dragan clapped his hands together. “Say what you like about the old boys, but they knew how to wine and dine. That’s how you get things done.”
“Like what I’m doing to you right now.”
“Exactly,” he said without hesitation. “You bring me to an excellent restaurant, you let me order what I like, and you soften me with compliments, perhaps a little inside information. Only then do you place your cards on the table. These new guys …” He shook his head, lost for words.
“It’s time,” Stan told him.
Dragan patted his lips with a napkin. “Time?”
“My cards.”
“Of course, of course. Tell me, my friend.”
Though they had talked around the subject before, they had never broached it directly. With Emmett’s murder, there seemed to be no choice. He said, “Is Zora Balašević still in your shop?”
Eyebrows rose. “Balašević? Do I know her?”
“Look at the label on that wine, Dragan. That’s a chunk of the national budget right there.”
A grin. “Oh, Zora Balašević! Like the great singer. I know of this woman, yes, but she’s not part of my shop, as you say.”
The lack of sleep and a gin-heavy Negroni before the meal were catching up to Stan. He rubbed his eyes. “Please, Dragan. This is about a murdered diplomat. I need a little perestroika here.”
“Why does everyone think that Russian words will get you anywhere with a Serb? I hate those bastards.”
“Zora Balašević.”
He sniffed and sipped at his glass of Clos des Papes Rhone, then spoke very seriously and quietly. “If Zora Balašević has come to you, I firmly suggest you give it a second thought. She’s connected to criminal gangs in Belgrade, probably trading in little girls. You don’t want someone like that on your team.”
“She was on your team, though. Wasn’t she?”
“Once,” said Dragan. He frowned and seesawed his right hand. “Briefly, Stan. Then we kicked her onto the street. Seriously.”
“But you ran her when Emmett was in town.”
“When did Emmett come to town?”
“February of 2009.”
“That’s when we got rid of her, Stan. February—no: March of 2009.”
There was something convincing about Dragan’s manner, and if he was being honest, then the events of last summer had been something entirely different than he had imagined. Stan leaned close, his voice serious and low. “Let me tell you a story, and maybe you can help me explain it.”
Dragan waited.
“This woman, Balašević, came to Emmett. This would be February of 2009. They knew each other back in the nineties, but times had changed since then. Emmett was now a diplomat, and she, she claimed, was one of your people. She used blackmail. She told Emmett that she would publicize some nasty secrets from his past if he didn’t give her classified embassy intelligence. For at least a year this went on.” He paused, staring hard, but Dragan wasn’t saying anything. “Look, if she was one of your people during that year, then I might become angry. I might even call you names. But I’ll soon get over it, and next year you’ll have some similar complaint about me. If, however, she isn’t one of your people, then I’m not only going to become angry, I’ll become destructive. I’ll start digging into her life, and into yours, until I find out who stole our information. You understand my position?”
Dragan held his gaze for ten full seconds before saying, “Perfectly.” Then: “I’m sorry to say that Zora Balašević never passed intelligence from Emmett Kohl to my office. More’s the pity.”
“Why did you get rid of her?”
He glanced over Stan’s shoulder at the restaurant. “She was moonlighting—that’s the correct word? We discovered, with the greatest sadness, that we were not the only client for her intelligence. I wanted to have her sent home missing some body parts, but it turns out that she has friends in Belgrade, friends who owe her. So I was told to keep my hands to myself.”
“Who was she moonlighting for?”
“Our hosts, the Egyptians.” He shook his head. “She is like Hosni.”
Stan frowned, not understanding.
Dragan smiled. “Remember what that Iraqi corpse, Saddam Hussein, used to say of Mubarak? That he was like a pay phone. You deposit your money, and you get what you want in return. Zora Balašević is the same. She will take a coin from anyone.”
Stan considered this. “She continued working for them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is she now?”
“I will look into it.” He took another sip of his wine, then set it down. “This is what I do know: She’s from Novi Sad. During the Bosnian War she supported Republika Srpska, which was how she made her influential friends. She’s in her early fifties, and she used to own a small place on Al-Muizz Street, in Islamic Cairo. And for a brief, wondrous period she held a respectable job in my office before she threw it away. That’s the extent of my knowledge.”
“So she’s a mystery.”
Dragan nodded, leaned back, and, proving he was as well connected as he had ever been, said, “Just like that Albanian thug who killed Mr. Kohl.”