The Cairo Affair

by Olen Steinhauer

  She returned to bed and picked up her cell phone, again turning it on. It was three thirty in the morning, and there were twenty-eight missed calls. Mother, father, friends, unknown numbers, and, twice, Stan Bertolli. Dependable Stan. She pressed the green button to call her old lover in Cairo.

  7

  Not surprisingly, Glenda was amenable to morning drinks, though when Sophie told her where they were going she paused, silence over the line, wondering if grief had driven her friend mad. “But it’s full of Hungarians,” she whispered.

  “It’s full of people who don’t know me.”

  “Ahh…”

  It was a real fear, but not for the reason Glenda suspected.

  When she told Fiona that she was going out with Glenda, her babysitter frowned. “You think that’s a good idea?”

  “I think it’s an excellent idea. For the next week I’m not going to be able to get away from anyone—family, press, police—and right now, while it’s still calm, I’m going to have a drink and a chat with my best friend.”

  “Your plane’s at three forty-five.”

  “And everything’s packed. I’ll come back a little tipsy, and you’ll guide me into the taxi. Really, Fee. Don’t worry.”

  Eventually, she nodded her acquiescence, as if with Emmett’s murder she had become Sophie’s mother. “Shall I come along?”

  “I’m a big girl.”

  “At least tell me where you’ll be, in case there’s some emergency.”

  “Menza, in Liszt Ferenc,” she said, her fifth or sixth lie of the day.

  The paparazzi had finally arrived, but it was a small contingent—two photographers lounging with cigarettes in the sharp cold just outside the gate to the apartment building. When she came out to climb into Glenda’s car, they snapped photos, and she wondered if later those photos would be requisitioned by the authorities, the last record of Sophie Kohl before she disappeared. Of course, the Budapest airport was full of cameras, and so was Cairo, but these clear, professional shots would be far more useful for the newspapers or some missing persons circular.

  She slammed the passenger door behind herself. Glenda, behind the wheel, said, “Well, aren’t you all dolled up?”

  “You want to drive?”

  Glenda put the car in gear, and they began to move, leaving the photographers behind. “You’re not thinking of throwing yourself at some Magyar, are you? Because it’s a losing proposition.”

  She went on, but Sophie was hardly hearing her. Instead, she was inventorying what she’d stuffed into her shoulder bag. Passport, credit cards, euros and forints, phone, iPad, address book, four pairs of clean panties, tissues, antibacterial lotion, aspirin, perfume, and the burgundy lipstick that Stan once said he loved. And, folded into quarters, the WikiLeaks cable: Aziz and Stumbler. She was thinking of chronology—the flight she’d reserved online early that morning left at three thirty-five, only ten minutes before the Boston flight, but she couldn’t risk Fiona staying with her at the airport. She could only hope that of all the places Fiona Vale would think to look for her, the airport would be her last choice.

  She was thinking of logistics. She wasn’t thinking of Zora Balašević, Jibril Aziz, or even poor Emmett. She was trying not to think of Stan, but was only partly successful, for when she had called him at three thirty that morning she’d noted the doubt in his voice. Would he be there, and if so would he be alone? She kept flashing back on their hotel room, and the particular nuances of his bed etiquette. Stan, unlike Emmett, was extremely oral.

  With shocking appropriateness, Glenda’s voice broke through. “And they’re a mess when it comes to cunnilingus. I don’t know what it is, maybe all that paprika they eat.”

  “You’re unfair, Glen.”

  She gave Sophie a sidelong glance as she took a turn, but didn’t bother replying.

  Bitch Lounge was on Üllői Avenue, Budapest’s longest street, which headed straight out to the airport down a corridor of sooty Habsburg buildings. The front door was half buried in the sidewalk, with a small, unassuming banner beside it. Glenda was right—though an influx of gay-scene foreigners attracted by the lounge atmosphere and drag shows had been changing the place, it was still largely Hungarian. And at that time, eleven thirty in the morning, it was mostly empty.

  The bartender was a prim young man who spoke spotty English. He brought their Cosmos to a zebra-print sofa along the brick wall. Over the speakers Édith Piaf sang “Non, je ne regrette rien.”

  “What time’s your flight?” Glenda asked, momentarily throwing her, but she meant the one Sophie wouldn’t be on.

  “Three forty-five.”

  “I’ll lay odds I can manage a ticket. Consul’s wife and all that. We can cause a drunken ruckus.”

  Sophie grinned. “No. Please. I’m hoping to catch up on sleep.”

  “Thatta girl.”

  “But right now,” she said, “I’d like you to open up to me.”

  Glenda arched a brow—only she could arch one that way. “I thought we were drinking.”

  Sophie leaned close and rubbed Glenda’s knee through her slacks. “Tell me what Ray’s been saying.”

  “About what?”

  “About what do you think?”

  The brow relaxed and Glenda shifted, her knee slipping out from under Sophie’s hand. “Well, first of all, he’s devastated. You know how crazy he was about Emmett.”

  “Yes, of course he is, Glenda. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She was talking about CIA agents; she was talking about terrorists; she was talking about an operation called Stumbler. She said, “I’m talking about the investigation.”

  “Oh, that,” Glenda said. She took a sip of her drink, looked at it, then took another sip before setting it on the table. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, okay?”

  Sophie waited.

  “They found him.”

  “Who?”

  “The man.” She held Sophie’s gaze. “The killer.”

  Her vision went a little fuzzy. “When?”

  “Yesterday. Morning, I think. They don’t have him, not in custody, but they got his picture on CCTV at Keleti Station—he took the Munich train.”

  Sophie blinked, trying to clear her sight, but it was hard. She felt a lump in her throat. “All yesterday you were with me. Ray came for dinner.”

  “It’s hush-hush, Sophie. I shouldn’t even be telling you now.”

  “But you knew?”

  “Not until we got home. Ray told me.”

  “Who is he?”

  A shrug, then Glenda reached for her Cosmo again. “I don’t know. Albanian, though. Some Albanian prick.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. That’s all Ray would give me. Maybe he knows more, maybe they’re just kicking around in the dark, but that’s all I know.”

  Sophie closed her eyes, blocking out everything, then opened them again, but it was all the same. That zebra print, Glenda with her drink, and, in the distance, one of the tinted windows just above the sidewalk, where high heels and cheap casuals hurried by. She felt the same way she had felt twenty years before on the Charles Bridge, mourning the loss of her Lenin—ignorant, an outsider, an object of scorn.

  “I need to make a call,” she said, taking her shoulder bag as she stood.

  Glenda made a worried expression. “Not angry?”

  She shook her head.

  “Sisters?”

  Sophie gave her a smile that felt entirely false. “Sisters, Glen. I’ll be right back.”

  She climbed to the front door, stepped outside, the cold descending on her, and continued up to the sidewalk. There were two City Taxis coming up Üllői, and she waved at them. The second stopped. She climbed inside and said, “Ferihegy.” As they moved, she took out her phone and dialed Andras Kiraly’s number.

  “Kiraly Andras.”

  “Sophie Kohl.”

  He took a breath. “Mrs. Kohl, how may
I help you?”

  “I’d like the name of the man who killed my husband.”

  Another breath, a cough. “You haven’t been told this?”

  “I suppose my friends forgot to mention it.”

  He waited, as if his patience would convince her to hang up. It wouldn’t. She watched the dirty buildings pass by, shadows of a grander age. She had all the time in the world.

  Finally, he said, “He has a Hungarian passport under the name Lajos Varga. However, his real name is Gjergj Ahmeti, and he is Albanian by birth. He is a known criminal, usually hired to kill people.”

  “An assassin?” she said, but kept her voice low so that the driver wouldn’t hear.

  “Yes.”

  “Does he work for the Serbs?” she asked without thinking through the question.

  “Why would you ask that, Mrs. Kohl?”

  “I…” She wasn’t ready to share with him what she hadn’t shared with the embassy—or anyone, for that matter. She wasn’t ready to trust Andras Kiraly. “Sorry, I have to go now.” She hung up. Immediately, the phone began to ring. It was Glenda. She disconnected her friend, then turned off the phone.

  SOURCE: WikiLeaks.org

  “Cablegate: 250,000 US Embassy Diplomatic Cables”

  AUTHOR: Harold Wolcott

  9 December 2009

  O 261214Z DEC 09

  FM AMEMBASSY CAIRO

  TO SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 1752

  INFO NSC WASHDC IMMEDIATE

  S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 CAIRO 001403

  STATE FOR F

  AID FOR AME

  STATE ALSO FOR NEA/ELA

  E.O. 18239: DECL: 12/09/2019

  SUBJECT: FALSE PREDICTIONS RE: STUMBLER

  Classified by DCM Frank Ingersoll for reasons 1.4 (c) and (d).

  ¶1. (C) Summary and Key points: This is an analysis of the May 2009 draft proposal, AE/STUMBLER. Based on present assessments of the regime in Tripoli, the primary assumptions behind STUMBLER are in doubt. It is the belief of this embassy that the operation should be abandoned in favor of more assured goals.

  ASSUMPTIONS

  ¶2. (C) Signs that the assumptions of instability, outlined in the May 2009 proposal by Jibril Aziz (CIA), are mistaken include:

  --The failed September 2009 protests in al Jabal al Akhdar Governorate, dealt with by government forces in less than 24 hours.

  --A November 2009 increase in salary to the Revolutionary Guard, which reports say have solidified the regime’s control.

  --Most importantly, the recently signed oil contracts between the regime and China’s CNPC, which has made the regime more flush with cash than in recent years, and would facilitate the easy purchase of mercenary support from throughout Africa.

  NEXT STEPS

  ¶3. (C) Given the low probability of success with STUMBLER, this office suggests the following course of action:

  --Continued support of underground resistance groups within the country, including the ALF and the WRAL.

  --Support for the IFG, which, despite central policies that contradict our own, could be moved into our sphere of influence. They have on numerous occasions attempted Muammar Gadhafi’s assassination.

  --Support to a variety of exile groups in order to pave the way for a post-Gadhafi regime educated in the methods and practice of democracy. See the list included in section 3.

  CONCLUSION

  ¶4. (C) With all that has been stated above, and will be detailed in section 2, the prospect for STUMBLER’s success is, in all likelihood, doomed to failure. To go forward would cost not only money and lives but American influence within the Arab and Muslim worlds, as Gadhafi would certainly use a failure to maximum propaganda effect. Instead, this office proposes a continuation of support for democracy groups within Libya, and the rise in funding of exile groups based in Washington, London, Rome, Geneva, and Paris.

  WOLCOTT

  PART II

  WE SHOULD LOOK AT OURSELVES

  Stan

  1

  He first discovered Emmett’s treachery in March 2010, though he had been following clues for at least a month. In early February Langley had sent a classified directive via one pale, sweating official from Internal Affairs who waited at Stan’s apartment, holding a file flown over in the diplomatic pouch. He sat in the kitchen while Stan called Virginia for verification, then in the living room he opened the file and laid out four pieces of intercepted communications from three Washington embassies, with the simple explanation, “The Bureau passed this on to us.” Syria, Libya, and Pakistan had been using material from top-secret communications that had originated in Harry’s office, material that covered aspects of trade, military analyses, and in two cases undercover operations. One was still in play, while the other—an exfiltration from Libya a month ago—had ended when the operative’s body was discovered, cut into pieces, in the desert outside Homs.

  “Christ,” Stan said as he went through the papers. He had personally known the dead undercover agent, whose names—both his birth name and the one on his documents—were right there in capital letters. Yet the emissary was treating this like business as usual. “Who’s selling us out?”

  The emissary shrugged. “That’s why we’ve come to you.”

  “I’m that squeaky clean?”

  “The easiest. We don’t have the manpower to send over a team at this point, so we decided to clear one of you and have you continue the investigation.”

  Stan knew what he meant by “easiest”—his father, Paolo Bertolli, was a legend in Langley circles, and the Bertolli name still carried weight eight years after his death. Stan said, “You want me to do this on my own?”

  The emissary smiled. “Is it really true your father spent six years undercover in the Brigate Rosse?”

  “What do the files say?”

  “Six years, entirely on his own.”

  Stan scratched at his nose. “Is this what the office told you to say? In case I resisted?”

  The emissary shrugged. Of course it was.

  He and Sophie had been involved for three months by then, meeting twice a week in their Dokki hotel, and for this reason it didn’t occur to him to focus on Emmett. He was already cuckolding the man; he felt no desire to ruin him completely.

  He first examined members of the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Section, in particular his boss, Harold Wolcott, and the other submanagers—Jennifer Cary, Dennis Schwarzkopf, and Terry Alderman. This took longer than expected, and while no amount of vetting could clear an individual with absolute certainty he decided eventually to move on. He expanded his search to include embassy staff who’d had access to the compromised trade, military, and undercover materials. Emmett made that list, but so did eighteen others from various embassy departments. He eventually discovered, from one year earlier, the surveillance photos taken by Terry’s men of Emmett meeting with an unidentified woman in a restaurant soon after his arrival in Cairo. No one had followed up on her identity—a note with the photo suggested it was a business associate, or a friend—so Stan sent Langley two shots of her face, with Emmett cropped out, and asked for an ID. Three days later he received the reply: Zora Balašević, suspected employee of the Bezbednosno-informativna agencija—the BIA, Serbia’s intelligence agency, which was run out of their Cairo embassy by a clever old man named Dragan Milić.

  Was it really possible that Emmett Kohl was selling them out to the Serbs? Even then he doubted it, for everything he knew about Kohl suggested otherwise. But Stan had come up empty on everyone else; he had no choice but to push on.

  After verifying that Emmett had had access to all four pieces of wandering intelligence, he spent another week following him through endless meetings and scouring his cell phone records. In their shared hotel bed, he asked Sophie about their past. He knew that she and Emmett had spent a week or two in Yugoslavia at the beginning of its long civil war, so he asked about their connections. She shrugged and told him that their Serbian relationships had faded soon after they returne
d to the States. “When you leave you’re convinced you’ll see your new friends again, but absence doesn’t really make the heart grow fonder, does it? It makes it colder.”

  She also told him that on the morning of March 29, the following Tuesday, she and Emmett would be joining the consul general at the Sayed Darwish Theater for a performance of The Nutcracker by the Moscow Stars on Ice, followed by a reception at the Russian embassy. So that Tuesday morning he arrived at their apartment a little after eleven, typed in their alarm code, and went inside. He tethered his computer to Emmett’s laptop with a FireWire cable and began to copy his hard drive. Though he didn’t imagine that Emmett would have kept evidence of treachery lying around, he searched the apartment anyway, finding things he shouldn’t have looked at—old love letters between Emmett and Sophie that she had dutifully kept in a shoe box, faded photos of the two of them when they were much younger and, it seemed, much happier, and, in a secret box behind Emmett’s underwear, naked shots of Sophie in bed, smiling. As soon as the copying was finished, he disconnected the cable, reset the alarm, and left.

  Emmett was a diplomat, not a spy—he had no idea how to cover his tracks. While deleting a file was enough to deny Stan access to the file itself, he was still able to find the record of its existence, and Emmett had never thought to rename anything. So among the deleted items he found W090218SQR and W090903SQB and W090729SQL—three top-secret documents that Langley believed had been the source of the compromised intelligence, items that were forbidden outside embassy walls.

  The evidence was damning, yet it still took him two more days to accept the obvious. While “love” was a word he still struggled to use, he soon realized that his unspoken feelings for Sophie had been clouding his judgement. The facts couldn’t be ignored: His lover’s husband was a traitor. He thought of that undercover agent whose mutilated body had festered under the desert sun. How many other agents had been killed or kidnapped because of Emmett’s misdeeds? Stan’s own mideeds paled to insignificance, and he lost all sympathy for Emmett Kohl. He even allowed himself to hate.