It was the second email, sent a few hours after the first, that stopped him. John. So good to hear from you. And yes, I miss you, too. I’d love to see you. So would my boss. Let’s meet in Tel Aviv tomorrow… Adina.
She was offering the ultimate honeypot, a chance to talk to the man himself. Still, the meeting stank of a Hotel California trap. Once she had him inside Duberman’s mansion, why would she let him leave?
He ought to forget the offer, move on. He could book a flight to South Africa and Witwans. Or call Shafer again, see if he had anything new. Although Shafer had gone dark since the morning.
As for Witwans, Wells didn’t want to go unless he knew the man had something. Without a private jet, he’d lose the next day getting to Johannesburg and then Witwans’s home. If he was wrong, he’d lose yet another day getting back. He couldn’t afford to waste that time. And he feared that the NSA was now up on the only passports he was carrying. As soon as he boarded an international flight, they and the CIA would know exactly where to find him. Until he knew if the agency wanted to bring him in, he couldn’t take that chance.
Tel Aviv, for better or worse, was less than five hundred miles from Cairo, less than an hour by air if Wells could figure out how to fly there without being caught. Plus, truth be told, he wanted to see Duberman. He couldn’t help himself. The offer tempted him. He was sniffing at it like a mouse at a hunk of cheese, trying to convince himself the net overhead wasn’t a trap.
No. He’d made this mistake in Istanbul. He needed someone with him to guarantee that Duberman wouldn’t hold him indefinitely. Who? Shafer was out of pocket. Rudi was old and sick and had done all he could.
Which left Duto.
Wells bought yet another new phone, ducked into an alley off Talaat Harb, one of the avenues that spoked north off Tahrir. He pushed himself against a wall as men strolled by. Since the riots and the revolution and the counterrevolution and the gropes and rapes that had come with them, women were invisible around Tahrir after dark.
Duto answered after two rings.
“Get yourself arrested again?”
“Not yet.”
“Too bad.”
“I need a private plane. Now. With you on it.”
“Where am I going?”
Wells debated being coy, but if anyone was tracing Duto’s phone, they would see the Egyptian prefix anyway. “Cairo.”
“Why?”
“Tell you when you get here.”
Duto was silent.
“And don’t forget the bag I left with Ellis.” Before heading out from Washington the week before, Wells had left a knapsack stuffed with the kind of goodies that cause problems at border control. It would come in handy for the meeting with Duberman.
“Ellis.” Duto stopped. Something he didn’t want to tell Wells on an open line.
“It’s at his house. Is that a problem?”
“No, but I need a few hours to put this together. Plus, what, eleven in the air?”
“As long as you can get here by noon tomorrow.”
“If you aren’t at the airport, I’ll kill you.”
Join the crowd. Wells hung up, found a two-window café and ordered an oversize pita stuffed with greasy chicken and falafel. Delicious. Before the 2011 revolution, some Cairo restaurants had served beer and wine. A handful had even served hard liquor. Although Islamic law banned alcohol, the sales were a concession to Western tourists, the millions of Coptic Christians who still lived in Egypt, and Cairo’s own cosmopolitan past.
But after the revolution the Muslim Brotherhood had sharply raised taxes on alcohol. Some restaurants that served it had seen their windows smashed. Even though the army had forced out the Brotherhood in 2013, the alcohol seemed to have disappeared, or at least been forced into the back rooms. Another way that Egypt had become more like Saudi Arabia, its neighbor across the Red Sea.
Wells washed down the last of his pita with a lukewarm Coke and set out on a countersurveillance run. He didn’t think anyone was following him, but he wanted to be sure. Tahrir Square was an excellent place to find out. The passageways that ran underneath the plaza allowed for an almost infinite variety of moves. Wells spent twenty minutes wending his way through them and then doubled back and at a near run came back to the entrance on the square’s northeast corner, where he’d entered. He stepped into one of the cabs that were ubiquitous in Tahrir.
“Salaam aleikum.”
“Aleikum salaam. Where to, my friend?”
“Ramses Square.” Another massive square to the northeast, this one home to the city’s main railway station.
At a traffic light a block south of the square, Wells handed the cabbie his money.
“But we haven’t arrived yet.”
“I like to walk.” Wells opened the door and stepped out, walking southeast, away from both Ramses and Tahrir. He was now sure no one was on him. He had run across the Egyptian security services before. They were decent trackers, but they weren’t subtle. Americans would have stood out even more. He found a café with an Internet station and checked in. Shafer still hadn’t replied, but Duto had, with a jet tail number and an arrival time. And something else, a phone number. Col. Alim Bourak. Tell him I said hello.
“Salaam aleikum.”
Bourak’s voice was wary.
“Colonel. A mutual friend suggested I call,” Wells said, in English.
“Does he have a name?”
“Duto.”
“Do you have a name?”
“No.”
A long pause.
“All right. Where are you?”
Wells told him.
“Stay there.”
Words that made Wells want to be anywhere else.
Bourak showed a half hour later. He was a tall man, mid-fifties, with a slight limp and the dull eyes of a mukhabarat officer who had seen more than he wished.
“Salaam aleikum.”
“As-aleikum salaam.”
“You speak Arabic.”
“Nam.”
“All right, come with me,” Bourak said in Arabic. “But no talking.”
Bourak turned out to live in a two-bedroom apartment in one of Cairo’s better neighborhoods. Wells didn’t know why the breadth of Duto’s contacts still surprised him. The man had been DCI for almost a decade. “One night, yes?” Bourak said, as he closed the apartment door behind Wells. “Then you can tell your friend we’re even.”
“I can talk now?”
“As long as you don’t tell me your name. Would you like something to drink? Unfortunately, I don’t have alcohol.”
Not a complete surprise. A five-foot-wide photo of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca dominated the living room.
“I don’t drink.” Wells examined the photo.
“You know the hajj?”
“I’m Muslim.”
Bourak squinted at Wells.
“Even without your name, I think I know you.”
“Did you take the pilgrimage?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve always wanted to go.”
“What they say is true. It’s difficult. So many people, not nearly enough space. The crush. The smells. No one has bathed properly in weeks. Yet sooner or later you stop fighting the pressure. Then something strange happens. I can’t describe it exactly. Not so much that you’re closer to Allah as that He’s closer to you. If you die there, no matter. Maybe this is what heaven is, so many people and no space to think about anything. No thoughts of the heat and the dust and the thirst. No concerns about money or comfort. Just these people bending together under some will bigger than their own. I wish every Muslim could do it.”