Omar said, “That is the man who ordered your husband’s murder. I am a man of law, and I am trying to be a good Muslim as well—never an easy thing. According to Islamic law, there are two options. The murderer may be slain in the manner that he committed murder. This is called qisas. Then there is diyya: The victim’s family may choose forgiveness and be compensated financially instead. Hold out your hand.”
Dazed, she did so, expecting him to hand her a gun. Instead, he placed a single coin into her palm, one Egyptian pound.
“Put it in your pocket.”
She did so, and he said, “That coin may be one of two things. It could be compensation, your diyya—an initial down payment, you understand. Or it can be your fee to kill him. As he has done, I would be engaging a third party to commit the murder.”
She took a step back, horrified, and he said, “It is an offer of work, Mrs. Kohl. Not a command. I can engage either of these men to commit the act as well. I simply thought that you might want a chance at redemption.”
She didn’t know what to say. She was thinking, Question, question, question. She was thinking, This is what the rest of the world looks like. She thought, Do I believe anything this man’s saying? Then: Does it even matter? Because the truth was that she wanted this, not for anyone but herself. She had also wanted it in Yugoslavia, though Emmett had taken it from her. That was the truth.
This man’s guilt wasn’t nearly as important as what she wanted to believe.
“You do not have to decide at this moment,” said Omar. “Sit in the car and think. But I should like to have a decision before sunrise. We will need to clean up afterward.”
Omar
1
In February 2009, still recovering from the heart attack he’d had at the beginning of the month, and a week before Jibril showed up to introduce him to a plan the computers called Stumbler, Omar discovered the existence of Zora Balašević in an agent report. As with Jibril seven years earlier, it was his eye for anomaly that guided him. She was an odd choice for Dragan Milić, whose staff in the Serbian embassy consisted entirely of men between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-seven. He brought this news to Ali Busiri, who suggested they assign some watchers to her.
Omar sent Sayyid and Mahmoud, and by their third day of surveillance they had taken photographs of this fifty-five-year-old Serb woman having drinks with an American diplomat named Emmett Kohl, who had arrived in town not long before she had. It was a brief lunch, but Sayyid moved close enough to overhear its climax. Emmett Kohl said in English, “I don’t give a shit what you threaten me with, Zora. I’m not spying for you.” Not loudly, but calmly and with the kind of self-control only diplomats and hired assassins can master.
Clearly there was something going on—if not from Kohl’s blunt statement, then from the fact that Mahmoud recognized an American agent sitting at a table near the street, also snapping pictures. So with Busiri’s blessings they picked up Zora Balašević the next day, and Omar spoke with her in English.
She was tougher than she looked, refusing to be turned by threats. She was a spy, after all—they knew that—and therefore it was within their rights to imprison her or kick her out of the country. Neither option seemed to concern her. So Omar turned it around. “Of course, the situation could be different. For spies who work for us, life in Cairo can be very comfortable. Profitable, even.”
He’d gotten her attention.
She refused to be completely open with him, but she did reveal that she was preparing to tap a source in the American embassy. “We watched you try, Zora. We watched you fail.”
She shook her head. “There are two ways to do this, and I’ve only tried one.”
So Omar was on hand to watch the approach in the Arkadia Mall, and he listened to the wire Balašević was wearing in the Conrad Hilton. He marveled at her forwardness and the way she thought on her feet: Balašević motioned toward a blond woman with some Russians and claimed she was the woman’s controller. Such marvelous invention! He was amazed and inspired.
It took two weeks of work before Sophie Kohl finally came around, and once that relationship had been established the rest of the infrastructure could be put into place. Balašević was paid through a front company called Beautiful Nile Enterprises, and in return she passed flash drives directly to Rashid el-Sawy.
The Serbian embassy soon realized that their agent was no longer loyal, and Dragan Milić attempted to have her sent out of the country. Ali Busiri met him for lunch to explain that Balašević was not to be touched, at least not within the borders of Egypt.
By April, once the quality of Sophie Kohl’s intelligence had been established, Omar was taken off of the operation and moved to less demanding assignments. “You’ve had one heart attack,” Busiri told him. “Why don’t we let you survive to retirement?” It was left to el-Sawy and Busiri to collect and process the files before distributing selected intelligence to other departments. Again, Omar had been sidelined, but he chose not to dwell on this as he watched over the well-being of diplomats in their city and came to terms with the strong possibility that the acquisition of Zora Balašević would be the final accomplishment of his career.
A year later, in April 2010, Busiri asked him to meet with Balašević again. Why him? “Because she’s getting angry with Rashid, and she doesn’t know I exist. I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
He visited her apartment on Al-Muizz Street and found her in a state. “What is the problem?”
Biting her nails and gulping Turkish coffee, Zora said, “Sophie is losing her taste for it. I am losing her.”
“Has she told you she wants to quit?”
A quick shake of the head. “Not yet. But she will.”
“This is normal enough,” he told her. “You should threaten her. Can you use the threat you used against Mr. Kohl?”
She shrugged, unsure. “I don’t want to.”
“Then we can approach her ourselves. We have enough evidence of her cooperation—we threaten to make that public, and she will continue working.”
“No,” Zora said firmly. “She does not know about you. She thinks all this is for my people. You come in, and she will snap.”
He wondered if this was true, or if Zora, with the greed that had brought her to Cairo in the first place, was afraid that she would be cut out of the chain and lose her considerable income. “Well, then,” he said. “I suppose you have no choice.”
She didn’t seem convinced.
“What is the problem, Zora? Your work has been excellent.”
Finally, she said, “I like her. I always have. She trusts me, but I also trust her. We have built something here, and this is going to destroy it.”
He would have never thought Zora Balašević so sentimental.
“You know how much she has done,” Zora continued. “All of it, for me.”
Busiri had told him nothing, but he nodded.
She said, “She did not have to sleep with him. I don’t think she wanted to. But I told her it could be important. I told her that if any suspicion came up, then it would be best to have him already attached to her.”
“Who?”
She gave him a suspicious look. “Stanley Bertolli. Who else do you think?”