Agent of Influence: A Thriller

by Russell Hamilton

  “I have one thing to take care of upstairs, Barry, and I’ll be right back,” Allan said, and then took off without waiting for a reply. The White House no longer felt like the secure environment it should have been, and for the first time he felt entrapped by it instead of empowered. All the people closest to him could be his biggest problem, and not the great asset he thought they were. He wondered if this was how Nixon’s paranoid mind first started operating.

  Chapter 30

  Alex sat in the living room of the cabin, reading the printout of the article Anna pulled off the Internet for the second time. She had received a phone call earlier that clearly upset her, and then appeared from her room a few moments afterwards, handing him the article and requesting he read it carefully. He was now officially on the payroll, and he poured over every word looking for some sort of clue. The headline along with Anna’s reaction left no doubt that things were heating up sooner than anticipated.

  Gray illegally investigates President-Elect Hardin, blared the headline of the Post. Alex continued reading. For the last three months President Allan Gray has been using the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate the personal affairs of the incoming President. All potential presidential candidates are vetted by special agents of the FBI, but a source close to the President has stated that President Gray, who lost his re-election bid on November 2nd, has been conducting an illegal investigation since being defeated at the polls. The source stated that, in addition to an illegal probe into President-Elect Hardin’s past in his home state of Nevada, President Gray also sent a special agent of the FBI to Egypt to look into the history of Mr. Hardin’s family. The source also confirmed that the agent caused a minor diplomatic crisis with their badgering of Egyptian government officials. This led to the U.S. embassy in Cairo receiving a formal complaint from the Egyptian government. The special agent was then forced to leave the country.

  President-Elect Hardin’s adoptive father and guardian Aman Kazim raised him since Mr. Hardin arrived in the U.S. in 1974. According to the source, Mr. Hardin has no surviving family members. It appears President Gray attempted to prove the incoming President’s family has ties to terrorist organizations operating out of Cairo. President Gray’s office has refused to comment on the allegations.”

  Alex finished the article and looked out the large picture window of the living room. The gravel driveway leading to the cabin was surrounded by a dense forest of pines, oaks, and other foliage that allowed only the bare minimum of light to hit the front of the cabin. The shadows of the huge trees created the appearance of late evening instead of mid-morning. It was the exact opposite of the view from the deck, where sunlight streamed in, magnified by the reflection off the river. For the first time he noticed the thickness of the window. It was certainly bullet proof, and served as a reminder that the cabin probably held many hidden secrets.

  “The window can take just about anything except a direct hit from an RGP. No small arms fire can take it down though.” Anna strode into his line of vision, dressed in dark jeans and a black mock turtleneck.

  “This article can’t be good news for us,” Alex replied as he nervously rapped the paper against the small end table. Judging by the hundreds of cuts and scrapes in the table he figured it must be as old as the original cabin.

  “Good assumption.”

  “Is there any truth to it?” Alex asked.

  “Yes, but of course everything has been turned on its head. Being in D.C. is like Alice in Wonderland. Everything is backwards. It does give me a good launching point for where we need to begin though.”

  Alex leaned forward in his chair, anticipating the curtains about to be lifted. “Yeah?”

  “The agent in the article? The one who got kicked out of Egypt?” Anna asked the rhetorical question. She waited for a sarcastic reply from Alex, and when it did not come she continued. He appeared to be slowly learning. “That was me. As I told you before, the FBI was investigating Zach as part of the routine background checks done on all presidential candidates. Since he didn’t come to the U.S. until he was fifteen, and due to my knowledge of Cairo, the job fell to me to do a little checking up on his background there.”

  Alex listened in rapt silence. Anna Starks stood with her back towards him. She stared out the large window, her eyes soaking in the dense forest surrounding the cabin, as her mind returned to that time period a few months earlier when she had spent several weeks in Cairo hunting for a past that did not seem to exist.

  ***

  She arrived back in Cairo in early October, just a few weeks after receiving her instructions from Malcolm. It was just a month before candidate Hardin became President-Elect Hardin. A heat wave was stifling the smog-filled Cairo air when her flight touched down in the ancient city. The long drive from the airport on the northeast end to downtown Cairo, where the American Embassy and Egyptian government buildings were located, proved worse than normal. Anna had spent a large chunk of her childhood in Egypt so she was accustomed to the traffic. Her father was an American diplomat and her mother an Egyptian from a wealthy family. Her mother was disowned when she told her family she intended to marry the American.

  When Anna Starks was first told this story as a young child it laid the groundwork for her distaste for the strict interpretation of Islam that her grandparents adopted, and that was growing in popularity throughout the 1980s and 1990s. She could not understand why her grandparents wanted nothing to do with her family. Her mother loved her father, and that should have been all that mattered as far as she was concerned.

  She sat silently behind the wheel of her tiny car. She had already turned down a more reliable vehicle numerous times. The small car was the way to blend in. Whether it was donkeys in the early 1900s, or the present-day mass of compact cars, the city always overflowed with different modes of transportation. The one sure way to stand out was to be a woman driving an expensive car. She checked her battered mirrors and saw nothing of concern. She was not being followed. She maneuvered the French-made vehicle cautiously. There was only one rule on the highways into the city, and that was that anything goes. One did not avoid accidents in Cairo by obeying stoplights, merging correctly, or coming to a complete stop, but by closely watching for the winks and nods from other drivers. It resembled driving by feel instead of sight, and Anna was extremely careful whenever she got behind the wheel. A dusty baseball cap disguised her feminine face. There were few women drivers on the road, and she knew the occupants of the compact European imports darting by her were still uneasy with a woman right beside them in the traffic jam.

  At over one hundred and seventy-five square miles Cairo is approximately half the size of New York City. However, it contains double the number of residents compared to the Big Apple. Anna was sure every one of them was driving on the freeway today as she shifted gears and slammed on her brakes, bringing her dust covered Peugeot to a sudden stop on the Sari-Salim Freeway. After fifty-five minutes of start and stop movement she finally managed to turn off the freeway and onto Abd Al-Aziz street. She began making her way towards downtown Cairo and her appointment at the U.S. Embassy. She had an early afternoon meeting scheduled with the American ambassador, a man whom her superiors had warned her about.

  A career diplomat, the ambassador was a man who made a living kissing up to his superiors and never rocking the boat. This strategy was a sure fire way to have a long, successful career in U.S. diplomatic circles, and he was content to live the easy life, using his government pension as play money. Anna knew he married into wealth, and that he requested a placement in Cairo for one reason. His wife wanted to spend four years exploring the culture, and the ambassador knew better than to upset the person holding the purse springs.

  She made a right-hand turn onto Al-bustan Street and passed the Tahir Square. In the heart of downtown Cairo, the area around her was once swampland, but Khedive Ismail transformed it into the Paris-on-the Nile in the late 1800s. There were beautiful gardens, wide streets lined with trees,
and even an opera house which provided the distinctly European feel he was trying to replicate in the North African city. A mass of tourists flooded the streets, and once again her journey came to a crawl. Ten frustrating minutes later she was past her final obstacle and pulling up to the heavily guarded compound of the American Embassy. She was technically on American soil once again.

  The whopping five minutes the Ambassador took out of his day to meet with her turned out to be more of a lecture than a meeting. He preferred to spend the time making sure she understood she was not to cause a scene by upsetting any Egyptian officials.

  “We’re already on unsure footing around here thanks to President Gray and his unbridled use of the military,” the Ambassador vented. “I’m doing my best to repair our strained relations. I’m expecting you to be on your best behavior.”

  “Of course, Mr. Ambassador. Were you able to get me an appointment at the proper government ministry?” Anna pretended to take his lecture seriously.

  “Yes. Your appointment is for ten a.m. tomorrow. Please be sure to keep your inquiry quick. You may view birth records and any other pertinent information on the presidential candidate, but that is it,” he said like an instructor dealing with a particularly difficult student.

  She stood silently while he lectured. Her relaxed features showed no signs of anger, but her eyes bore into him as she imagined the humor she would find in taking him to some of the areas of Cairo she knew well. Her stoic reaction, however, did not betray her thought. Anna continued to play the meek woman, “Don’t worry, Mr. Ambassador. I won’t be a problem.” A curt goodbye and she was out the door to catch a cab to her hotel. She had plenty of work to do, none of which she had any intention of informing the feckless bureaucrat of, before meeting with the Egyptian officials in the morning.

  After signing some routine paperwork for the State Department she exited the building and stepped out of the gated safety of the American Embassy. Suitcase in hand, she walked like a rich child leaving the safety of the parent’s mansion. A block away a crazed sheik wandered aimlessly through the congestion of vehicles, shouting about the end of the world and pending triumph of Islam. A green string was wrapped around his finger. He was dragging a dusty American flag along the ground behind him. A few drivers shouted words of encouragement while several bystanders turned away from the spectacle. They were clearly ashamed, but unwilling to launch a protest, feeling it was not worth the problems it would surely cause.

  Anna motioned to a Marine guard that she needed a ride. She decided to leave her car in the embassy parking lot for now. The guards standing on each side of the gated entrance raised their hands simultaneously. A taxi broke free from the congestion a block away, and rolled up to the front of the embassy. Five minutes later the taxi dropped her off a few blocks short of the Nile Hilton. Constructed in 1959, the Hilton was the first five-star hotel built in Cairo, and to this day it continues to draw a mass of visitors. In its heyday it served as the temporary residence of icons such as Frank Sinatra.

  Now, however, it served a less glamorous role as a launching pad for thousands of European and American tourists who came to tour the ancient city. After depositing her small amount of luggage in her room, Anna made her way back to the hotel lobby, passing through its courtyard coffee shop where many of Cairo’s upper class enjoyed mingling and discussing the day’s events. She stepped out into the sweltering heat of the midday sun and walked the short distance to the world-renowned Egyptian Museum, which sat conveniently next door to her hotel. The meeting with her contact was still an hour away, but she wanted to arrive early to check out the museum’s design and look for escape options if something happened to go awry.

  Anna had never dealt with Colin Archer before. She was told he had been in Cairo for ten plus years, and while she did not doubt his skills at gathering intelligence, he was still someone to avoid unless absolutely necessary. He could be under the watchful eye of any one of the numerous terrorist organizations that operated out of Cairo, and after such a long time in the same place she figured there was a strong chance that complacency had set in on his part. One can only stay on high alert for a certain period of time, no matter how dangerous the area. By now someone had surely fingered him as more than just a government bureaucrat.

  Anna stepped out of the oppressive heat and into the pleasant chill of the museum. The crowd waiting to get in was sparse, and after a few minutes she was shuffled through the poor excuse for security and passed through the grand rotunda that led into the museum. She meandered around the large central court of the first floor, taking in her surroundings as she made note of emergency exits and potential problem areas. The museum was not very large by American standards, and the entire first floor was an open court encircled by large sculptures from different Egyptian periods. She made her way down the outskirts of the open corridor, pretending to soak in the chronicles of early Egyptian history that surrounded the central court. She passed a limestone statue of King Djoser from the 27th century b.c., one of the oldest pieces in the museum. It had been discovered in 1924 next to the Step Pyramid in Saqqara.

  The Old Kingdom galleries led into the Middle Kingdom galleries, and on to the New Kingdom of the eighteenth century dynasties. She nonchalantly watched her fellow tourists, keeping an eye out for Colin, or anything that may appear out of place in the high-ceiled main gallery. Twenty minutes later and placated for the moment, she ascended the southeast staircase to the upper floor where she could view the entry point of the building from a safe distance.

  Exactly forty minutes later, and on time to a tee, Colin Archer meandered into view at the front of the building. His eyes roamed the room as if he were a gawking tourist. He was, in fact, checking to make sure no one had followed him. He caught sight of Anna eyeing him from the top floor, and they exchanged fleeting looks. After fifteen minutes of following the same path she had taken, they stood on the railing of the second floor together, peering out at a small group of American tourists huddled around the glass case in the center of the gallery below them.

  “How was your trip?” Colin asked as they both continued watching the activity on the floor below.

  “Long. Thanks for showing up on time,” Anna said in a clipped and business-like manner.

  “My pleasure. You look even more gorgeous in person than in the photographs Sean sent me. You were easy to spot.”

  “I’m not sleeping with you, so no compliments. I have a job to do, and I understand you can be of some assistance.” She made sure her annoyance was obvious. She did not like playing games. “Besides, I don’t like paunchy, bald guys.”

  Colin squirmed uneasily. Sean Hill warned him that she could be abrasive. That was putting it mildly, he now realized. “Sorry, just trying to break the ice. I understand you’re trying to do a little background check on the potential president. I can tell you right now the FBI asked me to look into it a few months earlier. I got a call when they starting doing workups on all the serious candidates in January. I couldn’t find anything useful though. As far as I can tell, all his family that lived here died some years back.”

  “Well, we will see if I can do better. We have people working over some Egyptian government types. I should be able to view some records tomorrow if everything goes smoothly,” she said in a confident manner.

  “They got you in already? Mr. Hill must have some pull in Cairo. The politicians around here make our guys back home look like models of efficiency. You do realize you probably won’t find anything?” Colin said.

  “I don’t have high hopes. That is why I’m talking to you. I understand you have some contacts that you think may be useful?” With the bad cop routine now over, Anna could get down to business.

  “Follow me,” Colin said. Without waiting for her he made his way to the top of the staircase and bought two tickets for them to get into the Royal Mummy Room on the second floor. Anna pulled her ball cap further down on her head and walked briskly to catch up with him. She did not like bei
ng led around by the nose.

  They walked in silence past the eleven embalmed royals whose final resting place was now the darkened room of a museum. The bony remains of Seti I and his son Ramses II lay in silent repose in the Royal Mummy Room as the two American agents made their way through the deserted space.

  “What are we doing in here?” Anna asked.

  “This part of the museum is the safest place to speak. The walls are specially designed to keep out moisture, and any other element that could hasten the demise of our predecessors.” He motioned to the encased bodies, keeping his voice hushed. “There are plenty of cameras, but no way to get any listening devices in here. It’s an ideal place for a meeting. Being an American inside a museum for tourists helps, as well. One of the few places in Cairo where we don’t stand out.”

  Anna looked at him with grudging respect. “Good to see you thought things through. Now what do you have in mind? I have a few things to take care of back at the hotel. I’m assuming you have the meeting with your contact set up today?”

  “He’ll meet us at 3:30. After mid-day prayers are completed he will be home and we can stop by his apartment. He lives in Islamic Cairo so you will have to dress appropriately,” Colin said.

  “I figured as much. Should I cover myself?” Anna knew the area from her childhood. Islamic Cairo was the heart of the original city, and many of the narrow alleys that made up the area were still reminiscent of medieval quarters. The area was home to ultra serious religious movements. Many of the hardcore terrorist groups that attracted so many of the poor had a huge presence in the area. Women were looked at with anything between mild disdain and outright hostility, and in order to avoid attention needed to dress modestly. Anna knew that because she resembled a local, it would be best to hide her features in order to avoid any unwanted confrontations. The excessive clothing also provided plenty of room to hide weapons on her body.