“She returned home. There was no reason for her to stay after you left. Her only advantage was her friendship with you and Mr. Kohl. We were lucky, you understand—she knew that we could pay her more than her own countrymen.”
Zora had abandoned her ideology—those convictions she had so admired—and given herself to the Egyptians for mere money. But hadn’t Zora said as much herself? Information wants to be free … I believe I should be paid for it. How much about Zora had she believed simply because she wanted to believe it? She felt as if she knew nothing. “But she wasn’t here just because of me. She had other people,” Sophie said, thinking of the blonde with the Russians. “She pointed one out to me.”
“Did she?” he asked, raising a brow. “Did you talk to these other sources?”
She shook her head.
“We watched Zora Balašević. If she had other sources, I think we would have known.”
The gall. Of course Zora had no one else—Sophie was the only one. Easy Sophie. Gullible girl. She inhaled loudly through her nose, trying to keep herself steady. “Is Zora connected? To Emmett. To his murder?”
Halawi rocked his head from side to side, then said, “I cannot be sure, but I think not. Not to your husband’s murder. Since she’s been gone, I have heard nothing from her. I believe she is happily living in Serbia with the money she earned here. She has no financial reason to get back into things, and she has no ethical stake in what happens in this part of the world. Jibril, however, does.”
She nodded, trying to rebuild her world, brick by brick. “You were talking about some names.”
He nodded, then stared a moment, eyes bleakly searching for something in her face. Finally, he said, “When he went into Libya, Jibril was to receive a book with the names and contact information of everyone in the old networks.”
“In what old networks?”
“Jibril’s. From before. When he ran his own network in Libya.”
She stared at his shaggy chin. “I thought he worked in an office.”
“You know nothing about him, yes?”
“No,” she said, impatience creeping up again. “So maybe you should tell me.”
She read hesitation in his face, but he had already made his decision. He had already dropped his bombshells. He took another look around to be sure no one was listening, then began to describe a beautiful young man, a family man, “a man who wants nothing more than for his people to live in peace, and to live well.” Jibril was young, yet he had witnessed “things you must usually be as old as me to see.”
That Halawi had respect for Aziz wasn’t in question, but as he spoke it became clear that he idolized the younger man, and this began to scare her. When he said, “Jibril, he is a moral force,” she cut in.
“Right. I get it. He’s wonderful. But I’m trying to find out who killed my husband. Do you know?”
“Of course,” Halawi said matter-of-factly. “Jibril’s employers.”
“CIA?”
“Yes.”
Sophie rubbed her eyes, hard. “Why did they kill Emmett?”
“Because of Stumbler. Because he was talking to Jibril about Stumbler.”
She was starting to feel as if the conversation were just spinning in place. “Why was he talking to my husband, of all people, about Stumbler?”
Halawi scratched at his long nose. “He knew about your husband. He knew your husband was … like-minded. Both good men interested in what was right. Your husband was a moral force as well.”
Emmett? A moral force? “Specifics, Mr. Halawi. Please be specific, because if you aren’t I think I’m going to walk out of here.”
When anger flickered through his features, she had the sense that women didn’t talk to him in this way, but he recovered gracefully and placed both hands flat on the table. “Mrs. Kohl, this is about an American plan to steal the revolution from the hands of the Libyan people. Jibril created Stumbler years ago, when the aim was to rid the world of Muammar Gadhafi. A moral aim. But now the world is different. Now, the Libyan people have begun their own Stumbler, and when they succeed they will run their own country. It would be wrong for America to take over that fight and place its puppets in Tripoli. Do you understand now?”
She nodded.
“That is why Jibril spoke with your husband. He realized that the Americans were going to steal the revolution. He only knew one diplomat who would agree that this was a crime—Mr. Emmett Kohl. He spoke with your husband in Budapest, one week before his murder, and then went into Libya to warn the people in his book that they would have to fight off the Americans as well.”
For a while, she just stared at him, trying to absorb all this. “Was Emmett a party to Jibril’s plans?”
He shook his head. “Your husband was not a part of this, no. Jibril went to your husband to verify what he had discovered. Your husband was not CIA—he was objective.”
“Emmett verified that America was going to steal the revolution from the Libyans?”
Another look crossed Halawi’s face, but it was neither shock nor anger—it was embarrassment.
“Well?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Mr. Kohl said that he did not believe it. He believed America was doing nothing of the sort.”
Sophie thought a moment. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that the CIA killed my husband. Yes?”
He nodded.
“Because they wanted to cover up Stumbler. Correct?”
“Yes. That is correct.”
“But Emmett didn’t believe we were behind it.”
“Correct.”
“Then why did they kill him?”
Halawi rubbed his eyes, maybe tired of spelling out the world to this woman. “Because Langley did not know for sure, Mrs. Kohl. It did not look deeply enough into the circumstances of their meeting.” He paused. “Mistakes were made. They often are.”
“And Jibril?”
“Yes?”
“You don’t know where he is, do you?”
“He is in Libya.”
“But you don’t know where in Libya.”
There was no point answering that, so he didn’t.
“What makes you think he’s still alive?”
Another smile, this one bordering on angelic. He placed a hand on his heart: “Because I believe, Mrs. Kohl.”
She wanted to laugh at him, but she didn’t. She wanted to cry as well, because for all the information he was willing to share, she was starting to believe he was as much in the dark as she was.
He sighed loudly. “Mrs. Kohl, this is not your fight. You know who murdered your husband. You can go home without shame.”
“You don’t know me very well, Mr. Halawi.”
He smiled, as if he really did know her, and said, “What do you plan to do that others cannot do better? You should be honest with yourself.” He inhaled through his nose, and she thought she saw sympathy in his features, but maybe it was a mirage. “You do not belong here, Mrs. Kohl. You should never have come.”
3
She lay on her bed in room 306 and stared at the ceiling, troubled by the fact that she was still unsure. She had her plane ticket, yet she kept asking herself questions. Was she really done here? Or was she going to try to find Jibril Aziz? What would she do once she found him? What answers did she expect from him? And if he gave her the same answer this Egyptian had given her—that the American government had killed Emmett—then what would she do with it? Would she call The New York Times and start shouting down the line?
She wasn’t sure she trusted Omar Halawi. He had an air of madness about him, the kind that changes the faces of zealots and bigots. He was building his world on a foundation that was subtly different than her own, and therefore whatever he said was just beyond her own way of looking at things. It was a cultural difference, perhaps, but it also made him sound like a loony to her.