The Cairo Affair

by Olen Steinhauer

  Though they could hear the distant thumps of artillery and see smoke rising on the horizon, they were not able to go into Vukovar, where the Vuka and Danube rivers met, for it was surrounded by the JNA—the Jugoslav National Army. Instead, Zora drove them to a muddy village east of town that she never bothered to name. There were tired-looking horses standing amid the rusting Yugos, but the streets, lined with small old-style houses, were empty until they reached the center, where a single shop advertising ice cream had attracted a few disconsolate-looking young men in army uniforms clutching bottles of Lav. They watched Zora’s Yugo drive by.

  “It’s dead here,” Emmett said.

  “Not behind doors,” Zora said as she turned up a puddle-choked side road and stopped at a tiny house with smoke drifting from a chimney. Like the others, it looked a hundred years old, brick walls covered with cracked, sand-colored mortar, a clay-tiled roof. When she parked behind a mud-spattered pickup track, the front door opened and an enormous black-bearded man in battle fatigues limped outside, arms raised high.

  “Draga moja, Zoro!” he shouted, and she climbed out and splashed through the mud to accept his embrace. He lifted her more than a foot off the ground. They kissed cheeks, and she brought him over to meet her Americans. His name was Bojan, and he spoke no English. While he seemed initially pleased by their unexpected appearance, he hesitated and lowered his voice and spoke to Zora. A look crossed her face; then she shrugged elaborately.

  “Something wrong?” Sophie asked.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Zora said as she brought Bojan to the trunk of the car. She popped it open and let him look inside. A broad smile broke out on his hairy face as he reached into a ragged cardboard box and took out a military-green, pill-shaped metal canister, about the size of his hand, with a tube leading to three prongs opened like the flower petals. There were letters on the side, and Sophie could make out PROM-1.

  “Bravo!” Bojan said.

  “What’s that?” asked Emmett.

  “Land mines. Bojan is paramilitary, but the army no share its mines.”

  “We were driving with explosives in that car?” Sophie snapped.

  Zora smiled and raised a finger. “And we live. Praise God! Come, we drink.”

  They crowded into Bojan’s cramped, dirty kitchen. On the counter, beside the sink, were two old pistols with wooden handles and cylinders. Perhaps he’d been cleaning them, but now he ignored the guns and went to a cabinet, inside which were three large plastic bottles of homemade plum brandy.

  “Does he have anything else?” Emmett asked, for the rakija they’d drunk the last days hadn’t done his stomach any good.

  Zora asked, and Bojan said, “Samo pivo.”

  “Just beer,” she translated. “But first we toast successful trip.”

  The rakija burned and then warmed her, and when Emmett switched to Lav, she stuck with the brandy. It helped keep her calm. Though he couldn’t talk to them directly, Bojan wanted to tell stories, but not war stories. He told them about his youth in Tito’s Yugoslavia, of swimming on the beaches north of Dubrovnik, now part of the Republic of Croatia, and climbing the Slovenian mountains. He was full of the glory of the communist past, yet he was no communist. “Ideology,” Zora explained, “is not his bag. He is simple man, and he like to remember good times. I think we all this way. In few years, after you make new life in America, you think of us nostalgically, too.”

  By then the room was spinning, and Sophie was ready to agree. They were here, here, in a war zone, drinking with a sentimental soldier who—tomorrow, perhaps—would be back on the front lines, fighting against the children of the Ustaše. They had come. They had seen.

  Emmett said, “What was that?” He was cupping his ear.

  “I hear nothing,” Zora said, still smiling.

  Sophie didn’t hear anything, either, and then she did: thumping. Not the distant thump of artillery, but something closer, under their feet. It was faint, but it was there, and it was close, inside the house.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I hear it.”

  Zora looked at Bojan, her smile finally fading, and said something to him. Bojan shook his head, almost embarrassed, and rubbed his face with a big, hairy hand. He spoke to Zora for a few minutes, another story, his face twisting into shapes of agony and anger as he went on. Finally he waved his hands, pushing everything away.

  “What?” said Emmett.

  Zora turned to them, her face hard now, no trace of warmth in it. “It is a man. Down. In basement.”

  “Who?” Sophie asked.

  “A monster.”

  Silence followed. Then Emmett said, “Maybe you want to be more specific.”

  “Ustaša,” Zora said. She lit a fresh cigarette and leaned back. “I tell you about them, no? About what they do.”

  Emmett placed his hands on the edge of the table, as if he were going to push himself to his feet. “You’re holding a man prisoner down there?”

  He had directed that question at Bojan, but Zora didn’t bother to translate. “Emmett,” she said soothingly, “that monster—I can’t even to call him a man. He is with Croat paramilitary. They move into Serb town not far away and kill everyone who does not run. There is woman who just give birth. It is difficult birth. She is bedridden. So they find her in her little house with baby in cradle. This man come in, say hello to her, pick up baby and toss it into air. Like a football. Soccer—that’s right?”

  Neither of them answered her.

  “He catch baby and toss him again, like he playing. But the mother, she know what kind of man is this. She begs him please to put child down. So he says okay, holds out baby in front of him, like so, and counts backward from three. On one, he drops baby and kicks. Like soccer ball, you know? Kicks baby across room and against far wall. Killed.” She snapped her fingers. “Instantly. The mother,” she said, cocking her head to the side and breathing loudly through her nose. “Well, you can to imagine. She is hysterical. Screaming. So he walks over, puts hand over her mouth and nose, like so, and when she fights he takes out hard cock. And fucks her. As she is suffocated.”

  “You don’t know this,” Emmett said after a moment of not breathing. He shook his head. “You can’t.”

  Zora shrugged. “I can know this, because later, when he drink with comrades, he tells it. He says he fucks this woman to death. He think this is funny. Bojan hears all this when they retake town. The Croats tell him.”

  Sophie thought she was going to vomit. During the story Bojan had gotten up and left the kitchen. Emmett swallowed loudly and spoke in a whisper. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I no make it up,” said Zora. “Bojan does not.”

  Another pause. Then Emmett said, “What’s he going to do with him?”

  “Starvation. It take maybe a week. Maybe more. He is down there two days.”

  “Give him to the police.”

  Zora shook her head, a quiet laugh escaping her lips. “The police in this area, they are Croats. Are you not been paying attention? You see what kind of world we live in. No. This man will die in basement. It is better than he deserve.”

  “Then he should just shoot him.”

  Zora shook her head. “Bojan sees too much to give mercy so easily.”

  “I want to see him,” Sophie said.

  “What?” Emmett looked as if he’d forgotten she was there.

  Zora hardly reacted. She only watched Sophie.

  “I mean it.”

  Zora nodded and stood up.

  “No,” said Emmett, reaching out to her.

  “We have to,” she told him, for a kind of plum brandy insight had come to her: To go. To see. To experience. If they left this house without looking, it would haunt them forever. “We have to,” she repeated.

  Zora took one of the pistols off the counter, checked that it was loaded, then called something to Bojan. He appeared in the doorway, looking bleary but hard, resolved, a key dangling from his pinkie. A few more words passed between them—he was pe
rhaps asking if Zora was sure about this. Sophie was sure; she was casting aside her ambivalence tonight. They hadn’t gotten close to a war zone. They were in a war zone. This was as far from Harvard Square as it was possible to be.

  Bojan led the three of them through his dusty living room, where a silent television showed snowy images of an old movie, to a padlocked door at the end of a brief hallway. He unlocked and opened it. He flipped a switch, illuminating rickety wooden steps leading down into the earth. But he didn’t go down. He handed the key to Zora and returned to the living room, where he sat down, lifted an acoustic guitar onto his lap, and stared at the television.

  6

  Then it was morning, and she felt as if she’d been in a dream. Not only of Yugoslavia, but of Egypt. A dream that was lingering still, for what was this cinnamon smell? That flowery, brown-tinted wallpaper? The green knitted blanket under her? Harsh daylight cut through venetian blinds. The ache in her back was enough to tell her this wasn’t a dream, but she had to sit up, look around, and then hobble to the bathroom she’d been given a tour of the night before to really believe it. After she flushed the toilet and washed her face and hands and opened the door, she found the old woman—yes, Fouada—standing in the corridor, smiling at her, holding out a large cup of tea. Gratefully, Sophie accepted the steaming cup. She said, “Omar?”

  Fouada shook her head and pointed toward the living room—toward the front door. On the mantel against the far wall was an ornate clock from another age: It was one in the afternoon. How long had she slept? She wasn’t sure, but the mere smell of the tea began to revive her. She wasn’t living in a dream, she told herself. She had never lived a dream, not even when it had seemed that way. Not in Yugoslavia, and not here, during those adrenaline moments with the flash drive and Emmett’s computer, when she’d felt a distant echo of that Serbian basement. Zora hadn’t been a dream, nor that tingling, electric attraction that had bound the two of them. Those afternoons with Stan hadn’t been a dream, either. It had all been real, and her mistake had been to think of it as a dreamlife. It was why she was here without friends and at the mercy of people she could not even communicate with.

  She took a long, hot shower. Through sign language and eager nods she got a pair of clean but oversized panties from Fouada. While the prospect of sharing her intimate garments clearly disturbed the older woman, she gave in, realizing that this poor girl hadn’t packed properly. Sophie forced herself into her old clothes, which were getting stiff by now. So be it. She drank her tea, dark and strong, then went to the kitchen, where Fouada had laid out a plate of toast and cheese and olives. She took a few bites—it was delicious. But Fouada wouldn’t let her eat for long. She took a severe look at Sophie, then disappeared into her bedroom, returning a while later with a long summer dress and a belt. She held it out with one hand, then used the other to point at the clothes Sophie was wearing and then pinch her nose. She handed over the dress and belt. All of this was done with a serene smile. While the dress—a mess of abstract patterns in yellow and brown—was too large, cinching the belt made it wearable. Only after getting her to model a bit did Fouada leave her to enjoy the olives.

  Later, Sophie returned to the bedroom and closed the door and took out her phone. There wasn’t much charge left, but there was enough. She checked the recent calls and selected Kiraly’s number.

  He answered after a single ring. “Mrs. Kohl,” he said, his accent bringing on a rush of familiarity. She’d forgotten how much she liked that overly earnest Magyar pronunciation. “I am glad you called.”

  “I wanted to apologize,” she said. “I think it’s time to tell you what’s going on. Someone needs to know.”

  There was no joy in his voice, only a kind of morose patience. “Thank you, Mrs. Kohl. I should tell you first that the American embassy knows where you are now. That you’re in Cairo.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “I want to make a confession to you. Will you listen to it?”

  “I’m not a priest.”

  “You’re the closest thing to a priest that I know.”

  “I take that as a compliment, Mrs. Kohl.”

  He waited, and she told him. She told him everything, answers to the questions he never would have thought to ask, as well as telling him stories that were far beyond his mandate. There were still so many things she didn’t know, like how everything had ended in two bullets entering her husband, but someone else could put it together. All she knew was that her story had led, somehow, to that restaurant, and eventually her guilt would be uncovered. So she told it all to a man whose job it was to make connections. He asked no questions, only listened, and sometimes she had to say, “Mr. Kiraly?”

  “I am here.”

  And she went on.

  It took about fifteen minutes to get it all out, a brief time considering that the story spanned decades, and when she was finished she felt exhausted and empty. Free. Not really, but at least her shackles were lighter, easier to bear. In the tired silence that followed, she lay on the bed again and stared at the ornate ceiling lamp. Kiraly also sounded exhausted when he said, “Well. That is quite a lot.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  Silence, as he considered his options. “I’m not sure there’s anything to do about it. Not now, at least.”

  “Are you going to tell them?”

  “Them?”

  “The embassy.”

  “I don’t see the point of that. Do you?”

  “I suppose not,” she admitted.

  “Thank you for your openness,” Kiraly said.

  “Thank you for listening,” Sophie said and hung up. A minute later, her phone bleeped to tell her that its battery was dead.

  7

  By the time Omar Halawi returned home, the sun was half hidden by the buildings around them. She’d rested on his terrace for a while, watching the sun make its way down, and between clay-colored towers she could see the pyramids. She’d forgotten about that—how from so many spots in Cairo you could just look out and find them sitting on the edge of the city. The ancient world watching over the modern one.

  Halawi looked as if he had been through the wringer. She knew that he had been at his office, wherever that was, but she didn’t bother asking what the trouble was. She had enough difficulty keeping track of everything on her side of the national divide to fret about his. He sat beside her on a wicker chair, both of them taking in the view.

  Without looking at her, he said, “Mrs. Kohl, I asked you last night, and I will ask again. Why are you here? What is it you want to do?”

  In the clarity that had followed her confession, she had her answer ready. “I’d like to face the man who killed Emmett. Find out why he did it.”

  “The man who killed your husband was Gjergj Ahmeti. We will probably never find him.”

  “The person who paid Ahmeti. That’s who I want to talk to. And maybe,” she said after a moment, “do something more than talk.”

  He nodded solemnly, as if none of this was a surprise, as if everything she’d said had been preordained.

  “And then I want to go home.”

  “Of course.”

  She took a breath. “I should probably talk to Stan again before I leave. He deserves some answers.”

  “I will see if I can arrange that.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  He raised his eyebrows, as if he didn’t know.

  “Who paid Gjergj Ahmeti to kill Emmett?” When he didn’t answer immediately, she said, “Was it Michael Khalil?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He spoke to Emmett,” she said. “In Budapest. On the day he was killed.”

  The Egyptian’s voice rose an octave. “Spoke to him?”

  There was something gratifying about this. Sophie, for once, knew more than he did. “Khalil claims he didn’t, but the Hungarians saw them speaking.”

  Omar blinked rapidly, hands moving in his lap; this, clearly, was a revelation. “What did
they speak about?”

  “Stumbler, of course.”

  He pursed his lips, nodding. “I will certainly find out about this,” he said, then turned and said a few words in Arabic. She realized that Sayyid, his tough young man, was standing in the doorway. Sayyid said something back.

  “It’s time for dinner,” Omar told Sophie, then stood. At that moment his phone rang, and he answered, listened briefly, said a few more words in Arabic, and then walked the phone back inside, muttering the whole way. She followed Sayyid to the kitchen and helped Fouada set the table for dinner. Sayyid made no move to help with anything; he settled on the sofa and scrolled through messages on his phone. Omar returned, rubbing his eyes hard enough that when he released them he had to blink in pain. “What is it?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.” He was lying to her, she knew, but part of her postconfession clarity was the understanding that there were things she would never know, so she did not press.

  Meals, she remembered as she picked at her falafel and salad, had been important in Yugoslavia. After Vukovar, they had stayed for three more days in Zora’s uncle’s house, for after Vukovar they couldn’t be comfortable with anyone else. Their shared secret tied them to Zora. They ate and drank with her and her friends—more strong-willed young people who mixed politics and art and faith as if they were gin and tonic and lime. There had been plates piled high with grilled čevap, sarma, meats of all kinds, pickles, cheap beer all around. Eat, drink, and back to the war—which was where she felt like these Egyptian men were heading when, after eating, Sayyid and Omar prayed together. The ritual washing. Hands on either side of their heads, behind their ears, praising Allah, then the near-crouch of hands on knees. Supplication. They had prayed in Yugoslavia, too, but never so humbly. The Serbs’ god stood as their soldiers’ rear guard. These people’s god was always far, far ahead.

  Then the men were gone, and she helped Fouada clean up. But this was not Sophie’s kitchen, and eventually Fouada shooed her away. She returned to the terrace, hearing voices and car engines and, more distantly, prayers. She remembered drinking Cosmos with Glenda and listening to her complaints about Hungarians. She wondered with despair how she could have ever hated that life.