Countdown in Cairo rt-3

by Noel Hynd

  “Maybe the Sphinx’s younger brother,” she said. “But keep in mind I’m traveling a long distance to see such a sight. So be consoled. There’s hope for you yet.”

  “Ouch,” he said. “Well, anyway, think of Cerny as another Pollard case, except on steroids and even worse.”

  Farther on, coming into view, was the second of the three Great Pyramids, that of Khafra. As Alex eyed it, it looked taller than the first pyramid, but she realized that was because it had been constructed on a hill.

  “Is Cerny selling to Israel?” she asked.

  “Possibly. But we don’t even know,” he said. “He has contacts with the Israelis as well as the Russians. The two Russians he was dealing with are freelancers also. They’ll make deals with the Putin government, and they’ll make deals with Tel Aviv, and they’ll be very happy to have their little brown brothers, the Arabs, help them murder anyone who gets in the way.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I follow it.”

  “All of that leads us to here. You and me, on a couple of pathetic old horses, in the cradle of civilization. And our assignment is to apprehend Mr. Cerny before he can complete any transactions, or any further transactions, and make sure his Russian friends go home empty-handed.”

  “Who were the Russians?” she asked. “Do you have names?”

  “Boris Zharov and Victor Kharniovski,” he said. “Nasty couple of characters, every bit as foul as that disreputable retiree you hang out with in Switzerland.”

  “I consider Yuri Federov one of my assets,” she said.

  “And a wonderful asset he is. But here’s the thing on Zharov and Kharniovski. Kharniovski isn’t our problem anymore. Victor took a silk rope around his throat in a back alley in old Cairo two weeks back, courtesy of Abdul, Tony, and a few of their friends. Careless of him, don’t you think? You should never step into an alley in this city with someone you don’t know.”

  “I did that with you the other night.”

  “Oh, but I’m okay,” he said blithely. “But at least it’s a mistake Kharniovski won’t make twice. And we managed to keep it out of all the newspapers so Boris doesn’t know. He thinks his Kharniovsky buddy is back in Moscow selling the deal.”

  “Then what about Zharov?” Alex asked

  “Staying at the Radisson Cairo,” said Voltaire, “under the name of Engstrom. He’s waiting for his dead associate to return from Moscow, and then he can get Cerny to come forward and close the deal.”

  “Why don’t you just go in and grab him?”

  “He’s wary,” Voltaire said. “He’s heavily armed. And he knows who all of our supporting cast is here in Cairo. And there’s no room for a slip. But like any Russian, he has his weaknesses. So this is where you come in. Follow?”

  “Follow,” she said.

  They continued to Menkaure Pyramid, the smallest of the three, and by this tomb there were three smaller pyramids, those of Menkaure’s children. Alex tried to conceptualize how long five thousand years was. When they reached the three smaller tombs, Voltaire turned to her again. “Want to go in?”

  “In where?” she asked.

  “The Great Pyramid,” he said, turning and pointing, indicating the first and largest of the three. “This is as far as we go. Have to go back, anyway. Not much in it. A lot of stone. Unmarked walls. The mummies and the treasures have all been removed to the museums. But it’s still an experience.”

  “I’m game,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Now let’s be tourists for a few minutes.”

  She pulled the horse’s bridle to the right, and they turned their mounts together. They rode back to the tallest of the three pyramids. There was another Bedouin with a hitching post near the Pyramid of Cheops. They turned in their horses. Alex had to stretch out her legs to feel right walking again.

  They walked from the hitching posts and stood in line. Alex put her hand to the exterior stones and found them cool, like a bottle of chilled water, even though they had been baking in the sun all day. Then she and Voltaire entered the massive edifice of stone. They began to walk down a short descending corridor and then followed a steep passageway up into the center of the pyramid. The tunnel was narrow and short. With a tremor, she flashed back to her experiences in Madrid and the claustrophobic fear from when she had been pinned in an old passageway under the city. But her movement here was free, even though she needed to proceed single file and a bit bent over. She followed Voltaire, who had made this trek many times before, he said. And the place hadn’t caved in on him yet.

  The passageway was about a hundred feet long and led to what the guide called “The Grand Gallery,” a vaulted and arched staircase of about the same distance that led to the King’s Chamber. The chamber was empty. Below it lay the Queen’s Chamber. No king, no queen, either. Not even a bishop, a knight, or a rook.

  They were in a small group of people climbing up into the pyramid, following one of the guides who must have made this trip a hundred times per week. From somewhere, Abdul, Voltaire’s bodyguard, had reappeared. A German woman behind Alex became claustrophobic and insisted the walls were closing in on her. She insisted on turning back and did. Alex was sympathetic but continued onward and downward.

  The inside of the pyramid was undecorated. No reliefs, no carvings, and other than small graffiti from modern-day vandals, no marks at all. High up on the walls above the King’s Chamber, however, there were hieroglyphics about the work gangs building the pyramid. The guide attributed it to Cheops, who had conceptualized his own tomb.

  In the evening, they stayed and waited for the light-and-sound show of the Great Pyramids. They sat on a terrace of a restaurant, enjoying a drink. Abdul was again visible, chatting up some tourists at a nearby table. The heat of the day had turned to a desert chill but there was still some glow from the Sahara sunset on the horizon. Watching the Pyramids and listening to the peaceful sound of the desert before and after the light-and-sound show, Alex got goose bumps.

  When it was sufficiently dark, the extravaganza began. The commentary did not impress Alex, but the dazzling light show and awe-inspiring backdrop of the Sphinx and Pyramids surely did. Red, blue, and gold strobe effects flashed across the timeless architecture of Giza, matched with, perhaps inappropriately, the grandeur of the score from Beethoven.

  The Sphinx played the role of storyteller. Even though in reality the Sphinx never spoke, tonight a creative conceit was allowed and the old stone lion-woman narrated the history of ancient Egypt in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic. Fragments of many languages floated up from various handheld speakers in a bizarre audio mix. It was hokey and touristy, but it worked.

  Alex and Voltaire ended the evening by taking a riverboat back up the Nile to Cairo, a ship modeled on the bateaux-mouches of Paris. Once again Voltaire knew exactly which shots to call. The food on the ship was traditionally Egyptian, tasty but heavy, and Alex started to feel ill effects in her stomach again. But she didn’t mention it. Her head pounded from time to time also. Then it would stop. She wondered what she had eaten or what she had been exposed to. Or maybe it was just the heat. She tried to ignore it, to will it away.

  “I wonder if you could set something up,” Voltaire said midway into the voyage back to Cairo. “A meeting between you, me, and Fitzgerald from the embassy. We need to get together face-to-face at least once. We both have information to convey to each other and to you. I don’t want any electronics involved. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to access Fitzgerald. So can you set something up?”

  “I could do that,” Alex said. “How soon?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “It could be done, I’m sure,” she said.

  “Needless to say,” he said, “I never set foot in that embassy or any other. In my persona of Monsieur Lamara, why would I? So we need to have a neutral site, someplace above suspicion.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “We were surrounded by desert today, right?” she said.

 
“As I recall,” he said.

  “Then tomorrow we’ll be surrounded by water,” she said. “How would that be?”

  “I like the way you think,” he said. “So we’re going to meet on a papyrus raft on the Nile?”

  “I was thinking more prosaic,” she said. “The pool area of the hotel.”

  “That would work for me,” Voltaire said.

  There was entertainment on the boat, planned and unplanned. They had live music, and then a belly dancer appeared when they were halfway to Cairo. Alex, who had never been to a belly dancing show before, looked at it with great amusement, and wondered if the dancer was enjoying it as much as she seemed to be. The Egyptian girl flirted with every man in the place, getting reams of dollar bills tucked into the waistband of her skirt and getting her exercise as well.

  Voltaire fell into conversation with some wealthy Egyptians who had brought relatives from Europe to see Giza. This dancer was better than average, the Egyptians said. And at the same time, Alex noted Voltaire’s technique. He was always striking up conversations, keeping his ear to the ground, being friendly with everyone. He must have picked up tons of information and scuttlebutt that way. He was good at what he did.

  In any case, Voltaire liked the dancer a little too much. He enjoyed playing the buffoon tourist instead of the master spy. He got up and danced opposite her and then rewarded her by sticking a US twenty-dollar bill in her skirt. In doing so, he had set a tone for the evening and loosened up the crowd for even heavier tips. She would go into the crowd and grab other victims and drag them up to the stage to dance with her too, which caused most of the excitement. She seemed to specialize in victimizing Americans and did well at it, innocent as it was. She gave Voltaire a wink and a kiss on the forehead when she finished her show and swept past.

  Later on the boat ride, Alex and Voltaire talked with an Egyptian man who spoke nearly flawless English. He was berating everything from Mubarak, to Obama, to the captain of the ship, to the French woman standing next to him who seemed to be his wife.

  Ever the diplomat, Voltaire agreed with everything he said, except that he offered high praise to the bearing and patience of the French lady. As the ship docked, the day seemed to have acquired a surreal tone to Alex. In some ways, she was a little kid again. She couldn’t believe that she had seen and touched and even entered the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the oldest and largest pyramid in Egypt.

  Off the boat, Alex spotted a familiar face waiting for them.

  Tony with his cab and, presumably, his artillery.

  Abdul ducked away into the chilly night, and Tony was back on duty.

  FORTY-THREE

  Like any fine hotel, the lobby of the Metropole boasted an arcade of overpriced specialty stores catering to the hotel’s international clientele. Alex visited the shopping area the next morning and found what she was looking for. A plain navy-blue maillot to use in the hotel’s vast swimming pool. A size ten was a perfect fit and the suit flattered her. Not too sexy, but not too demure. It would work.

  Toward 1:30, she went to the well-guarded pool area behind the hotel. She entered the water on the shallow end and began doing laps, a small fresh bandage on the scar on her arm. At least she could combine some exercise with business. Despite showering and washing well the night before, the parched atmosphere of the desert remained upon her. The water soothed her.

  She completed a brisk ten laps, watching the other visitors to the pool as she swam. She saw Richard Bissinger enter the hotel’s pool area, using the guest pass that she had left for him at the front desk. She continued to do laps as Bissinger, or Fitzgerald, disappeared into a bathhouse at the far end of the pool.

  Voltaire, she noted, didn’t need a pass. He apparently had whatever access he needed to anything he wanted all over the Middle East. He arrived a few minutes after Bissinger but, wearing a pair of shorts suitable for swimming, was faster at getting into the water. He stood at the shallow end and waited for her.

  Bissinger emerged from a locker area and slipped into the pool. He moved to the area where Voltaire stood. Alex did a final lap, then emerged and grabbed a towel and a pair of sunglasses off her deck chair. Then she joined her two visitors in waist-deep water.

  It was midday and the pool was otherwise deserted, other than children and nannies. The children, splashing and screaming, formed a perfect acoustical backdrop to make electronic eavesdropping on them impossible, even via a rifle mike aimed from a hotel window.

  “I’ve been to meetings that were all wet before,” Bissinger said. “But to actually be in a pool is a first.”

  “You should thank me for getting you out of the office,” Alex said, standing and pushing back her hair. She toweled her shoulders and let the towel hang across them.

  “I do,” he said.

  “Everyone knows everyone,” she said. “I already know that. So what are the signals we need to get straight?”

  “It seems that a certain someone in whom we have an interest,” Bissinger said, “ ‘Judas,’ has just made a move.”

  “What sort of move?” Alex asked.

  “As I understand it, he smelled danger here in Cairo, or maybe a better opportunity somewhere else, and departed from this wonderful country.”

  Against her normal habit, Alex swore emphatically. She had traveled all this way for no resolution?

  “Where is he?” Voltaire asked.

  “Tel Aviv,” said Bissinger. “Or so we think.”

  “Ha! Well, that’s not far, is it?” Voltaire asked. “Although the jurisdictional problems just increased.”

  “So is our operation scuttled?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Bissinger said. “Look, here’s what else we know about Judas. In addition to his actual passport under his real name, he has at least four others. Two are Russian, a pair of solid forgeries that he seems to have picked up from his business associates. Then he’s got a British and a Hungarian.”

  “Impressive collection,” Voltaire said.

  “I posted an alert for all the passports and their numbers,” Bissinger said. “We have an internet apparatus now. Works through Homeland Security and all the airlines.”

  “How so?” she asked.

  They all fell silent as a pool attendant passed by with chilled containers of purified water. They each grabbed one. Bissinger tipped the man with a wet US five-dollar bill, which was appreciatively received.

  They drank liberally. The sun pounded down on them.

  “When a passport moves in which we have an interest,” Bissinger said, “whoever posted the alert gets an update. As long as we have passport numbers, we can keep track of anyone in the world.”

  “Impressive software,” said Voltaire, who was more of a street-level guy.

  “We had analysts review the images on the airport security cameras at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. We checked the passengers disembarking for the flight from Cairo. The images we got are not a hundred percent conclusive, but we think that Judas arrived.”

  “So?” Alex asked. “What if he continues onward with a different passport?” Alex asked. “A fresh document. Presumably a man who has access to four fake passports isn’t going to get weak-kneed about finding a fifth.”

  “We’re sunk if he does that,” Bissinger said. “We would just have to wait for him to surface again. But the odds are that he won’t do that. Whenever a new passport goes into the system, there’s always the chance it will bounce from improved security software. The other thing is that if Judas has no reason to be wary other than normal precautions, he’d tend to use an ID that has already worked.”

  “What’s the rest of it?” Alex asked.

  “Judas has got some deals cooking for the information he swiped from the US Defense Department, but it’s all fairy gold to him until he can close a deal. And we know he needs to close a deal ASAP because he knows that Langley is officially listing him as a defector. We suspect Judas won’t move again, wherever he is, until he’s given the head
s up. It’s a one-two punch. He has to hear from his first contact here by email, then he needs to get the voice go-ahead from his number-two guy, his security guy here in Cairo. Only then will he move. Then there’s the problem with the apprehension point. Let’s say he’s coming from Moscow or Ukraine. If he flies to a neutral point, like Athens or Rome, we have no brief to pick him up. Quite the contrary. Certain host countries in Europe would be furious if we did. Too much rendition during the Bush administration. We did it but never told the host countries we were doing it. Over the back channels they’re still screaming, and the new administration in Washington wants to distance themselves from the Guantanamo mentality. So we have to sit on our hands and wait for him to connect. We can monitor him, say in the airport at Athens, but even that’s risky. He’ll be looking for a tail, and if he sees it, he’ll cut bait, head back to Russia, and that’ll be the end of our ball game.”

  “Or we can lure him back here,” Voltaire said softly.

  “What’s here that he wants?” Alex asked.

  There was a soft splash nearby. A child’s wayward Frisbee had skimmed to rest near Alex. She picked it up and deftly sailed it back, with a smile and a wave.

  “One of his Russian friends is still here,” Bissinger said. “Boris Zharov. Boris is one of the two men Carlos caught him with. Judas is anxious to get his deal with Boris done. Overanxious, perhaps, which could work in our favor.”

  “Tell me more about Boris Zharov,” Alex said.

  “Boris is still ensconced at the Radisson Cairo,” Bissinger said. “He goes down to the hotel lobby every evening around nine. He sits there and glowers for about an hour, smokes like a Soviet-era factory, and waits for instructions from Moscow. He’s got a wife back in Moscow, but he’s always on the trawl for Western women. If he doesn’t get lucky, he goes out to the clubs. Dances with every young girl he can find. Brings them back to the hotel when he gets lucky. He’s careless. He builds most evenings around a skirt and a bottle-long consultation with Dr. Stolichnaya. Sometimes he pays for both.”