EK: Would you go about it another way?
Another pause, then Michael Khalil opens his door.
EK: Where the hell are you going?
MK: I’m letting you get back to your appointments.
EK: No, you’re not. You’re going to tell me about Sophie.
MK: You don’t want to know. Trust me on this.
EK: Actually, Michael Khalil, I do want to know.
Source: Visual
Khalil gets out of the car, followed soon by Kohl, who jogs up and grabs Khalil’s arm. They speak, heads close to each other. The shotgun mic is unable to make out the conversation. Whatever Khalil shares, however, has a visible effect on Kohl. He shakes his head and shouts, “What?” Then he comes close to listen to more, still shaking his head no. Finally, Khalil places a hand on Kohl’s shoulder, whispers a quiet word, then walks briskly away.
Kohl returns to his car and sits inside for a full five minutes before starting it and driving to the American embassy at Szabadság tér.
Khalil is followed. He speaks once on his telephone, then continues on foot to his destination: the Hotel Anna at Gyulai Pál utca 14.
PART III
WHAT THE REST OF THE WORLD LOOKS LIKE
Sophie
1
Were she honest with herself, Sophie would admit that the most jarring moment of the previous week, not counting the murder, was when she realized that she had been second, an afterthought. Zora had gone to Emmett first—he was why she had come to Egypt—but Emmett had been too strong, or too upstanding, to be swayed by her threats. Sophie, on the other hand, had folded immediately.
They had been in Cairo nearly a month, still fresh from Paris, and Sophie had been relaxing at the Arkadia Mall. This was long before looters gutted and set fire to the building during the uprising. Back then, in 2009, it had been a cool, pleasant place for moneyed shoppers to spend afternoons away from the sweltering crowds, and it was there that Zora appeared, as if plucked from a dream, smiling and opening her arms, saying, “Sofia,” in her dripping accent. Everything from Zora Balašević’s mouth was drenched. She was older now, older but still vital, crackling with enthusiasm and intensity. Once, that intensity would have frightened her, for she remembered how Zora could swing between lightness and the weight of history. But now things were different—weren’t they? They were both older, both mellowed by the years, just two old friends in a strange land.
Over cups of tea at Groppi, Zora asked her about France and the life of a diplomat’s wife, using a form of English so different from the strangled Zora-speak of 1991. Over the past two decades she had ironed out most of the mistakes, settling on a slightly formal foreigner’s take on the language. She smiled a lot, too, but it was a smile of amusement—they both remembered how life had been in Yugoslavia, and the life Sophie was describing sounded as if it were part of a lunar existence.
“Tell me honestly, Sofia,” she said, sticking to the Balkanized name she’d used in 1991. “You are bored, no?”
Sophie laughed aloud to cover up a bubbling anxiety. Was Zora switching again—lightness to weight? “Of course,” she said. “But I’d be a fool to complain.”
“I don’t believe so,” Zora said, her generous smile slipping away. “You’re not a brainless puppet. You never were. Leisure is not enough to satisfy your soul.”
Sophie reacted instinctively to people who threw around the word “soul,” but from Zora’s lips it didn’t seem out of order. Zora thought differently; she thought Balkan. Sophie said, “I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I am, draga. You need something more.”
As if this were something entirely fresh and original, Sophie leaned back and stared into her sultry eyes. She put Vukovar out of her mind and focused instead on those days before Vukovar. She remembered warm nights in the countryside, beer and rakija, dancing to Yugorock bands—Električni Orgazam, Disciplina Kičme, Idoli, Haustor—as well as the Velvet Underground, then afterward feasting on platters of grilled meats. Carnivorous and pleasurable. Unlike Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, Novi Sad had embraced them, absorbing them into a different way of living, boisterous and celebratory. There was so much happy chatter about Adriatic vacations and house parties and What do you think of Yugoslavia? before the politics would rear its head and the bitter shouting matches began. Yet each evening ended with forgiveness and kisses and proclamations of undying love. Existentially fatalistic, Emmett had called it. Their endless parties were an answer to the question: Why am I here? Their answer was to crank up the hi-fi.
Then she was back, and Zora was watching her. Sophie said, “You’re right. I do need something more.”
“You need a little adventure.”
Sophie shrugged.
“Don’t forget that I know exactly how you look when you’re having an adventure. I’ll bet it’s been twenty years since you looked like that.”
Sophie stared, repulsed by her audacity yet at the same time wanting more, wanting something to cut through the leisurely haze that she sometimes feared was consuming her. Zora was tapping on a door that, soon after their return home from Yugoslavia, she and Emmett had simply shut and locked. They’d come to the conclusion that they couldn’t change the past, and so to dwell on their mistakes would only cause more damage. Now, two decades later, the one person on earth who could pick that lock had arrived in Cairo.
But Zora was smiling radiantly as she said these things. “You were alive then, you know? I thought at the time that you were the most beautiful woman I had ever known.”
“I doubt that.”
She rubbed Sophie’s knee, long red nails lightly scratching her thigh. “Believe me, Sofia. You were magnificent.”
Did Zora know what kind of effect her words would have? Now that Emmett was dead, she wanted to think that Zora Balašević had known everything. She wanted to believe that this Serb woman had been a master of manipulation, targeting her from the moment she learned the Kohls were in town, or maybe from the moment she laid eyes on that twenty-two-year-old Sophie back in Novi Sad. What she didn’t want to think was that Zora Balašević was no more omnipotent than anyone else, yet the evidence now suggested this. She had first tried Emmett, failed, and afterward gave the wife a try—she had probably been shocked by how easy Sophie was. A handful of nostalgia and a pinch of seduction, and she was hers.
When Sophie asked what Zora was doing in Cairo, her answers had been elusive. “Work, business. You know.” What kind of business? A shrug. “Information. It’s the information age, no?”
Sweet, naive Sophie: “You have a Web site?”
A Balkan laugh, throaty and rolling. “Oh, no. But maybe I should get one. What do you think?”
“If you don’t have a Web site, you don’t exist.”
Zora stroked the back of Sophie’s hand. “I think I’ll forget about the Web site, then.”
She had the uncanny ability of making elusive statements and giving Sophie a knowing look that suggested she was sharing a secret, so that the idea of asking for explanation never occurred to her. It was just so good to be part of Zora’s secret world that she didn’t want to break the illusion by asking foolish questions. Eventually, Zora said, “Maybe you’d like to work with me now and then. I think you would like it.”