“Bojan will,” said Emmett.
Zora shook her head. “If Bojan survives winter, I eat my hat.”
Suddenly finding words again, Sophie said, “You don’t own a hat.”
For two full seconds they stared at her in silence, and then both Emmett and Zora burst into hysterical laughter. A quick release of the anxiety rippling through them. Sophie couldn’t laugh, not yet, for she understood that Zora was telling the truth: She hadn’t manipulated them into anything. Sophie had done the manipulating. She wasn’t even sure now that she believed the story of the Croat’s crimes, and what was most troubling was that this didn’t bother her. She thought of how she had felt on that bridge in Prague—vacant, naive, stupid—and wondered if she could ever become that way again.
They raised their glasses.
Zora said, “Our secret. What hold us together.”
Everything was just beyond her understanding that night, but by the next day, when they returned to Zora’s uncle’s house, she understood it better. When Viktor came by, it took only an hour for him to accuse the Americans of having had a ménage à trois with Zora, and so they went with that story, Zora even kissing them both in public. There was a kind of pleasure in this deception, and Sophie soon wondered why she had wanted to be naive again. She was real now. She was authentic. Decades later, when Zora offered her a new path to authenticity, she leapt at it.
Back in Boston, the job applications and interviews Sophie went to felt so unimportant, and employers could read the lack of ambition in her face. No one called her back. Emmett, on the other hand, applied himself with new fervor, redirecting himself toward diplomacy. “We didn’t understand anything there,” he told her one night. “I don’t want to be that ignorant ever again.”
She smiled and kissed him. “And I will be your wife,” she said, believing that this was enough. He had sacrificed himself for her, after all, and she would never be able to forget that. Much later, when she saw him looking handsome and strong in Chez Daniel, she would still think how lucky she was.
9
Very early on Tuesday morning, Sophie woke in the wicker chair on Omar Halawi’s terrace, covered in a blanket, as Fouada shook her gently awake. The woman said something melodic yet urgent with the word “Omar” somewhere in it. It was dark and cold. Sophie blinked, straightened in the chair, and wiped at her eyes. She ached. Fouada left without another word, so she followed. In the living room, Sayyid was buttoning up a thin leather jacket, and Omar was clutching a cup of Fouada’s ubiquitous tea, watching Sophie come in.
“Are you rested?” he asked.
She nodded, running a hand through her hair.
“You told me,” he went on, his voice low and even, “that you wanted to face the man who ordered your husband killed. Is that still true?”
Again, she nodded.
“Okay,” he said, then went to give his wife a kiss. As they whispered to each other, Sayyid took a woman’s long coat from the back of a chair and held it open for Sophie. It was apparently Fouada’s, for it, like the dress she still wore, was too big. Sayyid kissed Fouada’s cheeks while Omar opened the front door. “We can go now.”
She followed the two men down to their car, Sayyid again taking the role of chauffeur. They drove for a while through the empty, predawn city, crossing the Nile and heading south through squares that she thought she recognized, but wasn’t sure of because in the hours before morning they were so empty and dead. She’d never traveled through Cairo this early, and it felt like a parallel city that she’d never gotten to know.
Eventually, the buildings thinned and disappeared. Black desert spread out to their left, and occasionally between smaller buildings on their right she caught glimpses of water. They were following the Nile south. After a turn-off a sign told them they were heading toward 15th of May City. She’d never been out here, and she wished briefly that Stan was beside her to explain everything. Where was he? Had he given up hope of finding her? Maybe, but once she was back home she would call him and they could have a more honest conversation. How honest? That was still to be decided.
Eventually, they took a left turn and headed along unlit, sandy streets, turning again and again until the road had become rough gravel, winding through dunes. Up ahead, she saw a pinpoint of light that grew in definition. It was a lamp under a large tent with a roof but no walls, only poles, nestled between two dunes. They parked beside another car, a scratched BMW; Sayyid got out and used his telephone. Omar turned to her and said, “We have him there.”
When she squinted she could make out two shapes under the tarp. The large silhouette of a man pacing, a hand to his ear, talking on a phone, maybe to Sayyid. The other silhouette was a man in a chair, his head moving as he talked and talked, unlistened to. Was it Michael Khalil? She couldn’t tell.
“Did he tell you everything?” she asked.
“Enough. If you ask him who’s to blame for your husband’s death, he will say Muammar Gadhafi. Certainly there is some truth to that, but not enough. No, he is to blame for the deaths of eight people I know of. Among them are Jibril Aziz, your husband Emmett, and Stanley Bertolli.”
A sharp pain shot through her, and she turned to get a good look at his weathered face. “Stan? What?”
“I am afraid so.”
“He killed Stan? Emmett and Stan?”
“Yes.”
“When? I mean, Stan is—” She inhaled deeply, then shook her head. “He can’t be.”
“His body was discovered last night, in his car. He’d been shot.”
“Oh God.”
“It is about information,” Omar told her. “It’s always been about information, and betrayal. That is the man who is responsible.”
She was hardly hearing him. She was thinking of Stan telling her to stay, to wait for him. Would he have lived? Or had he been marked from the moment Zora approached her in the Arkadia Mall? Had they all been marked since 1991? She said, “I don’t know you. Not really. Maybe you’ve been lying to me. Maybe you killed them.”
“That is up to you,” he said, undeterred. “Remember that Inaya sent you to me. And while you may doubt this man’s particular crime, I can tell you that he is certainly guilty of another capital offense in Islamic law—fasad fil-ardh, spreading mischief in the land. He has been on the wrong side of truncheons and guns and fists for a very long time.”
“And you haven’t been?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps I have, and when I am in that chair you can consider the question. Until that time, this is the situation that exists.”
She breathed through her nose. “What’s his name?”
“It does not matter.”
“Yes, it does.”
Omar took a moment to think, then said, “It is my responsibility to safeguard my country. For that reason, I will not share his name. Yet I also feel it is my responsibility to help you. You performed a great service for my country last year. You made sacrifices, and you have been treated poorly for your efforts. Now, you have a decision to make. This man has killed the men in your life, yet you also blame yourself. You understand that the information you gave to Zora Balašević is connected to what has occurred. I cannot absolve you of this. Yet I may be able to help.”
What was he talking about?
“Come,” he said, and got out of the car. Sayyid, off the phone now, opened her door. Cold gusts of desert wind tugged at her, hissing, and sand tickled her nose. Her ears chilled immediately; then she sneezed. Omar approached her and pointed toward the tent and those two silhouettes. The second man hadn’t gotten up, and it was then that she realized he hadn’t raised his hands while he’d been talking, which in Egypt was a near impossibility. He was tied to the chair.