He tried to talk his way out of it, but his slip had been obvious. She said, “Who’s running me?”
“Michael Khalil.”
“I mean, who’s running Khalil?”
“We are, Zora. That is all that matters.”
Of course that wasn’t all that mattered, for running agents is the closest of all relationships, closer sometimes than that between a husband and wife. Zora was shocked the way a wife would be if her husband had been sharing her intimate secrets with a stranger.
Once the Kohls left Cairo, he took it upon himself to visit Zora again as she prepared to leave the country. She was calmer now, more tired. A year and a half working for them had taken something from her. “Come to see me off?” she asked.
“You are heading home?”
“Indirectly.”
“Yes?”
She measured him with her eyes a moment, then said, “They really don’t tell you anything, do they?”
He settled on the sofa. “Why don’t you tell me?”
She told him that by July she’d had enough. “It happens, you know. People tire.” She had told Khalil that it was time to wrap things up. “I could see it in Sophie’s eyes. She was dying. Her marriage was going to hell, and her relationship with Stan was killing her. And me—she did not even have me. Just as I predicted, she tried to pull out, and so I had to become the whip. When I was younger this would not have bothered me. But look at me. I am not young. I am tired. I want to live my life.”
“What did Khalil say?”
“He told me that if I tried to walk away I would be arrested as a spy. Then he changed our arrangement. He told me that from that point on no money would be sent to my account. It would be collected, in escrow, until the time came for me to leave.”
Omar cleared his throat, then wiped self-consciously at his nose. “I am sorry about that.”
She shrugged. “So now we are down to passing packages in public places. I will meet him in Frankfurt, where he will give me the rest of my money.” She laughed hoarsely. “I can’t wait to get out of this shithole.”
He wasn’t sure what to say, so he got up and helped her latch a suitcase that was giving her trouble, then went to make two cups of coffee while she went to the bathroom. When she came out, she was smiling again, but the smile gave him no joy. “You just passed me on, didn’t you?”
“I had no choice. It was not my decision.”
She nodded at that and thanked him for the coffee. He followed her back to the living room. With the full boxes and empty walls it felt barren. He asked what she’d had on Sophie Kohl. After thinking about it a moment, she said, “I threatened to reveal to the world that she is wonderful, and that she has nothing to be ashamed of. I threatened to expose the fact that she is the kind of woman who can do anything, even if she cannot see it herself.” She paused. “Do not ever make an enemy of Sophie Kohl.”
Given this preparation, he expected something impressive from his first meeting with Sophie Kohl months later, but she was a disappointment. Perhaps Balašević had oversold her asset, but part of the problem was himself. By the time he arrived at the Semiramis, he felt as if his bones were going to splinter. Six hours in a bumping automobile to get back to Cairo from Marsa Matrouh—what had he been thinking?
The truth was that he had hoped he would never have to meet Sophie Kohl. His section had benefited from her information, but he had trouble feeling much appreciation for a woman who had given away her country’s secrets so easily, and then began an affair with another man in order to protect herself.
He’d seen her picture plenty of times and had watched from a distance as she met with Zora, but he was unprepared for the woman he found in the Semiramis café. She was thin, her hair flat and unkempt—she displayed that inattention to her looks that naturally beautiful women slide into, assuming the shape of their faces will compensate for their laziness. Then he admonished himself: Her husband had been killed, and he should be kinder.
Despite appearances, she proved herself more astute than he imagined, catching the contradictions inherent in the facts. For example: Why would the CIA kill her husband if he didn’t believe the Agency was behind Stumbler?
What could he say to such rational thought? This woman, like anyone outside of the intelligence services, believed that intelligence organizations worked by machine logic, and that this was their flaw. Their flaw was that they didn’t work by machine logic. They worked by human logic, which was as frail and emotional as the people who filled the agencies of the world. The best he could offer was hardly an example of perfect logic: “Mistakes were made.” Then he focused on his primary desire, which was to get Sophie Kohl out of Egypt. She was prying into sensitive things, and if she wasn’t careful she was going to get hurt.
Did he care? Did it matter if an adultress and traitor was hurt or even murdered under his watch? Maybe; maybe not. But he was beginning to believe that the world really was a different place now that Mubarak was gone. The rules had been broken and tossed to the winds. A new beginning, the most important moment in any nation’s history. This was the moment when new precedents were being set. If he let the CIA murder this woman in Egypt, then it would do so again. If she left unscathed, then hope remained that the country could become a place where even Fouada would feel safe.
After their meeting, still not knowing if she was going to follow his advice and leave, he waited in his car, which he’d parked in the same spot from which he’d watched Jibril leave with John Calhoun. It was nearly nine. He thought about how she looked, this Sophie Kohl, how tangled in body and mind, and he worried what she might get up to before finally leaving Egypt. So he put in a call to Sayyid, who showed up within twenty minutes, climbing into the passenger seat. “Mrs. Sophie Kohl, wife of the murdered American consul, is in room 306. I need you to keep an eye on her. If she receives any visitors, tell me.”
Sayyid frowned. “What’s she doing here?”
“She’s trying to figure out who killed her husband.”
“Are we helping?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer, so he didn’t.
2
Fouada was asleep when he got home, and after a half hour sitting on the sofa, feeling his sore bones and muscles creak, thinking over his conversation with Sophie Kohl, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Yet when his phone rang a little after midnight, it woke him. He snatched at it. “Yes?”
“A visitor,” said Sayyid.
Omar blinked in the darkness, but nothing was coming into focus. “Who?”
“More than one, actually. Paul Johnson from the American embassy has been sitting in the lobby all night, but not long ago Rashid el-Sawy went to see her.”
Omar sat up straight. “What?”
“He took the elevator, so I went up the stairs. He was standing outside her door.”
“Did he go inside?”
“I think he wanted to, but she didn’t let him.”
“Do they know each other?”
“He introduced himself as Michael Khalil. After that, he talked too quietly.”
El-Sawy talking to John Calhoun, and then Sophie Kohl. What was going on?
He told Sayyid to keep him updated, then hung up. A light came on in the bedroom, and he heard Fouada: “Omar? What are you doing out there?”
He went to the bedroom door, leaned against the frame, his back aching. The sheets were up to her chin, and she was smiling dreamily. He said, “Work.”
“No more trips to the coast, okay?” she said. “My bones.”
He gave her a quiet laugh and came to sit on the edge of the bed, reaching out to hold her hand. “You’re not alone.”