Because, Zora once told her, you want something better, something more than mere happiness.
And where had that gotten her? What kind of arrogant bitch could claim that there was anything more important than happiness? What kind of a fool could believe such a twisted philosophy?
This fool, this one here, sitting huddled on a stranger’s terrace, unable to speak a word to her hostess. This was how you ended up alone.
8
1991
Emmett and Zora were arguing.
“This is criminal,” he said. “Jesus Christ—can’t you see that? It’s sick.”
“What he do is sick. You don’t see what is in front of your nose?”
“And this doesn’t make it any better!”
“It is justice.”
“Starving? It’s medieval. Just shoot the guy if you have to, but this?”
Sophie had said nothing. They had descended into the musty basement, the distant thumps of shells still going off in the direction of the city, and under the harsh glare of an unshaded lightbulb they’d found him tied up and gagged in the corner. Pale and filthy, a blond beard growing out on his face, sunken eyes wild with terror and, briefly, a moment of hope that evaporated when he saw the old pistol in Zora’s hand. That was when Emmett had broken, waving his hands around, sometimes striking the low beams that ran just over their heads, sawdust and dirt raining down on them.
Sophie just used her eyes. She looked at the Croat soldier’s torn fatigues and saw crusted black blood on his sleeves and collar and thighs. She watched the heels of his filthy boots digging into the damp dirt, the bruised, glazed eyes rolling in their sockets, the sharp red marks in his cheeks where the gag pressed. Looking at him made her sick, but thinking of his crimes was worse. She imagined the jackbooted Ustaše rounding up bony villagers and driving them, packed in trucks, to extermination camps. She saw a laughing man holding a small girl’s ankles, swinging her against a brick wall, long blond hair flying. She thought of this man—this very one—drunk on rakija, drop-kicking a newborn, raping a bedridden woman. Suffocating her. She imagined herself on that bed, unable to get any air, the pain between her legs.
On the train to Prague, Emmett had said, This is what the rest of the world looks like. She’d had no idea, not really. Books, she felt all at once, had taught her nothing. Those who want to know, do. Harvard Square was Disneyland.
“Give me the gun,” she said quietly, but loud enough for them to hear, for they stopped in midargument to look at her. Again, Sophie said, “Give me the gun,” and held out her hand.
Zora at first looked surprised; then her face filled with understanding.
Emmett said, “No, Sophie. This is crazy.”
But Zora had already handed over the pistol, and Sophie felt the comfort of its weight. It was a dangerous world, so much more dangerous than she had imagined in Massachusetts. You needed something on your side.
Emmett stepped closer. “Give it to me. Sophie? Are you listening? Give it to me.”
Sophie put voice to her reasoning, though when she said it aloud she knew it was an excuse: “It’s mercy. He’ll starve.”
“It isn’t our place,” Emmett said, as if that meant anything. Hadn’t they come here believing that this was their place—that they were responsible for what occurred in these Balkan homes?
She raised the pistol.
“No,” he said, holding up his hands and stepping between her and the groaning Croat.
“Move,” she told him. Cold now. So cold.
“It is Sofia’s choice,” said Zora, approaching, “not yours.”
Emmett pushed her away and focused on his wife. He looked hard into her eyes, trying to read intent in them. He saw her resolve—she was sure he could see it, for at that moment he changed as well. Wearing an expression Sophie had never seen before, he stepped up to her. One long, purposeful step. Lips pressed tight together, he grabbed the gun by its barrel and twisted. She let him take it from her hand. This was her husband, after all. He was thinking more clearly than she was—that was obvious.
Then Emmett turned the pistol around in his hand so that he was holding the grip. He turned his back on Sophie, raised his arm, and shot the Croat twice. Once in the stomach, then once in the chest. The Croat tried to scream and cough behind his gag, kicking hard, leg spastic, blood seeping through the gag. Though they could see his death shivers so clearly, they only heard the high ringing in their aching ears. Then Emmett dropped the gun into the dirt, shocked by himself. Eventually—who knew how long it took?—the leg ceased its kicking, and the man sank deeper into himself in a final gurgling sigh. Zora, mouth agape, could only stare.
Sophie was shaking uncontrollably, the tears starting, yet she was still together enough to be surprised by how still and hard Emmett’s hand was when he put his arm around her and pulled her close.
They couldn’t go home that night, for a skirmish had occurred along the road they’d come in on. Bojan, the guitar still on his lap, was listening to updates on television, and he told them to wait until morning. He didn’t seem particularly upset that the Croat in his basement was dead. He just shrugged, as if someone had burned his dinner. Zora brought out the rakija.
Later, their ears still ringing faintly, she said, “I see it in you. In both of you. You are not tourists; you are not just passing through.” When Emmett accused her of having manipulated them, she said, “You overestimate. I just bring something for Bojan. I think you want to see. The pig in the basement—I don’t know nothing about him. How you feel?”
“Angry,” said Emmett.
“Cold,” said Sophie.
“You was ready,” Zora told Sophie. “You see the problem, and you want to fix it.” To Emmett, she said, “You are right—starvation is medieval. Sofia knows it, too. You watch out for her.”
“You’re delusional,” said Emmett. “You trapped us, and she was just—”
“No,” Zora interjected, wagging a finger at them both. “Stop pretending. I show you something, that’s it. And now it is our secret. Something between us. Our connection. No one will know.”
“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.
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 B
usiri, 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.
The Cairo Affair Page 33
