As they passed through Islamic Cairo, however, the feeling drained, for she was soon back to Emmett. The next day was his funeral, and she imagined in-laws dressed in Protestant black, weepy but not loud, for too much noise was abhorrent. Emmett had made wicked fun of such things, and it was a shame that she wouldn’t be there to make fun of it for him. She wondered what they would be thinking about her absence. Would they be angry? Worried? Christ—was anybody worried about her? Were they searching at that moment, scouring satellite photos and listening for the signal from her phone? Was there an office somewhere in Langley where some young agent had been tasked with finding Sophie Kohl?
She hadn’t even turned on the television that morning—was her disappearance on the news?
She disembarked on the southern end of the ancient, sun-drenched street, and as she walked north she sometimes caught glimpses between the low buildings, some recently renovated, of the ever-present Citadel. It was not a long walk—ten minutes, maybe—but the stares she received made it feel much longer—she’d forgotten how Egyptian eyes could bore into her, how sometimes men she passed would hiss and cluck their tongues at her. She wiped at her wet forehead, trudging up stone steps with crumbling, medieval buildings on either side—ornate, arched entryways and windows, walls tiger-striped by layers of dark bricks and light. She passed the aromatic spice and perfume markets, the mausoleum and madrasa of the Qalawun complex, and the Aqmar Mosque, before reaching the mud-colored, flat-faced building across from the house of Mustafa Ja’far, an eighteenth-century coffee trader. There was a narrow entrance with three stone steps, and as she mounted them the peeling front door opened and a tall, handsome Egyptian came out, smiling at her. “Good afternoon,” he said, knowing from her face and blond hair what language to speak.
“Hi, can you let me in?” she asked, then wondered if greetings were the extent of his English.
They weren’t. He unlocked the front door and held it open. “You live here?”
“Visiting a friend. Number five.”
He looked her square in the face, eyes bruised and a little glassy. “A friend of Pili’s?”
“How did you know?” she said, thinking, Zora’s cover name, Pili.
“She’s the only one who speaks English.”
“Right,” said Sophie. “Of course.”
She lingered in the doorway, watching the Egyptian disappear into the crowds, then stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind her. She stood in the gloom of the entryway, smelling dust from some ongoing renovation. Someone, somewhere, was cooking something wonderful. She climbed the narrow stairs she remembered climbing only twice before in her life—each time, like now, with apprehension in her gut.
Their meetings had usually been in nondescript, public places, so the two times she’d come to this apartment had been exceptional. Her first visit was to celebrate their initial success. Sophie had delivered a flash drive full of information, and afterward Zora had wooed her with champagne and the details of a UBS Bank savings account, opened at the Albisriederplatz branch in Zurich, which had jumped from zero to twenty thousand euros overnight. You’re a natural, Sofia. That had been a wonderful night, just the two of them drunk and dreamy and open. Emmett had been on a trip to Alexandria, and so she stayed over, though in the morning when she let her out Zora reminded her that they were never to meet there again. Tradecraft, draga.
Of course.
Yet there had been a second visit, nearly a year later. Zora hadn’t been answering her phone, so Sophie came to the apartment. She’d survived a liberating year of betrayal, while Emmett was succumbing to an onset of evil moods that she would only be able to fully understand moments before he was murdered. Their fights had been mounting, and at the time she’d begun to believe that she was the cause. Her affairs: the one with Stan, and the one with Zora. She was beginning to believe that he knew she was selling his work on to their Serbian friend, though she had never even told him that Zora was in town. And if he didn’t know anything, then she was sure he would figure it out eventually. Her only option was to withdraw.
But Zora must have sensed her apprehension, for she dropped out of contact, and Sophie’s only recourse was to seek her out.
That had been April of 2010. By then she’d been a traitor for a year and an adulteress for nearly five months, and she felt as if her fragile world were going to collapse on her. So she’d rung Zora’s bell, and after a moment was in. Zora began with apologies—“I’ve been out of the country.”
Over glasses of bourbon, Sophie told her. It had been a wonderful ride, but she couldn’t take it anymore. It was time for them to shake hands and call it quits. She couldn’t go on deceiving Emmett.
“Because he is such an innocent,” Zora said.
Sophie wasn’t going to take the bait. She shrugged. “It’s got to end.”
Zora made fresh drinks, and when she returned from the kitchen she was a different woman. A woman that Sophie had yet to meet—or, perhaps, a woman she hadn’t met in twenty years. Gone were the smiles, the easy sisterhood of information professionals, and the understated flirtation that drew Sophie to her, promising an erotic relationship that, despite overtures, had never actually been consummated. “You can’t stop,” Zora said. “Not now.”
“Of course I can.”
“Your material is in demand. The value is rising.”
“So is my blood pressure.”
“Then take medication.”
“You’re not listening, Zora. I’m done.”
“No, Sophie Kohl. You are not done. When you are done, I will tell you.” No smiles, no warmth.
Sophie set down her glass and stood. “I’m sorry. I really am. But we both knew it couldn’t go on forever.”
Zora set down her own glass but didn’t get up. “Do you want Emmett to learn about Stan?”
Sophie lost track of her feet, spread her hands for balance, and stared hard at her. “You would do that?”
“To protect my information, yes.”
She imagined this, Emmett learning about Stan, and how it might crush him. She could feel herself weakening, so she pushed the image away. “Then do it,” she said. She was stronger than she had been a year before. If her world had to snap, then let it snap.
As she walked to the door, she heard Zora say, “And Vukovar? How do you think the American government would react to that? What their diplomat and his wife used to get up to in war-ravaged third world countries?”
She was touching the door handle, and she kept her hand on it as she turned to look at Zora. “You would ruin Emmett’s career simply to keep me?”
“Worse,” she said. “I would ruin Emmett if I was unable to keep you. We’re not talking about thousands of dollars, Sofia. We are talking about millions. I would do a lot more for that.”
“You’re a bitch.”
“You finally understand,” Zora said quietly.
Their relationship became something completely different that day, and now, nearly a year later, Sophie listened at the heavy door to number five. She thought of Emmett. As bad as his final minutes had been, they could have been worse. Instead of learning about Stan, he could have learned about Zora. That would’ve killed him before the actual murder.
Through the door, she heard a radio playing and a woman’s voice speaking Arabic, either to herself or on a telephone. Sophie raised her hand in a small fist, then rapped on the door.
3
By the time she returned to Stan’s apartment in Garden City and placed herself back on the sofa, the iPad in her lap and a cold cup of the morning’s coffee in one hand, she understood in a way she hadn’t before just how alone she was. She’d seen it in the unfamiliar face of the teenaged girl who’d opened the door to apartment five, a cell phone pressed to her ear. A pretty girl with eyes the shade of teak, she raised her eyebrows at Sophie, saying something like Aye khidma?
“Zora Balašević?”
The girl frowned, then muttered into the phone before lowering it
to her hip. “You’re English?”
“Yes, sorry. I—I was looking for my friend who lives here. Zora Balašević.”
The girl—Pili, she assumed—shook her head. “We’ve been here since November. I don’t know who was here before.”
Sophie nodded, only too late realizing her eyes were filling with tears. “Okay. Right. Thanks.” She raised a hand in farewell, then fled.
On the bus ride back she’d spotted among the dark crowds a pay phone outside a convenience store. She got off at the next stop and trudged back to the spot, finding a layer of dust on an old phone box that advertised the RinGo phone card. Most Egyptians didn’t go near these machines, preferring the mobile phones that had helped make their revolution possible. She headed into the convenience store and bought a phone card from a sniffing man, a victim of late-season flu, then went back to the machine and took out business cards. Strauss, Reardon, Kiraly.
A crowd of women passed along the sidewalk, heads covered, chatting merrily, laughing. She almost didn’t hear the voice on the line when it said, “Kiraly Andras.”
“Mr. Kiraly,” she said, nearly shouting. “Hello? This is Sophie Kohl.”
“You’re still in Cairo, I see.”
“Have you told the American embassy?”
Silence, then: “You sound different, Mrs. Kohl.”
“Do I?”
“I almost thought you were someone else,” he said. “Pretending to be you.” Then, realizing the emptiness of his statement, he said, “No, we haven’t told the American embassy, and we won’t until we better understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.”
“You know the reason,” she said. “Jibril Aziz.”
“He’s in Cairo?”
“I don’t know. You told me he flew here.”
“Yes.”
“So he should be here, somewhere. Unless…” She frowned into the handset as it occurred to her. Stumbler. Aziz had written Stumbler.
“Unless what, Mrs. Kohl?”
“Unless he’s in Libya.”
Silence.
She said, “Do you really not know where he is?”
“I do not. Perhaps you should ask his family.”
“Family?”
He seemed amused by her surprise. “Most people have families, Mrs. Kohl. If you give me a phone number, I can call you with that information tomorrow. From the office.”
“What do you know about Zora Balašević?”
“Excuse me?”
She repeated the name, then at his request spelled it, and as he wrote it down she said, “She’s connected to my husband’s murder, but I don’t know how or why.”
“How do you know this for sure?”
“Can I just say that I know it?”
Silence, then he said, “Mrs. Kohl, if it hasn’t become clear to you yet, you are the one in control of what you do and do not say. Eventually, I would like for you to say more, but for the moment you’re choosing reticence. I will have to accept this.”
“Apologies, Mr. Kiraly.”
“I will look into this woman, as well as Mr. Aziz’s family. Would you like to give me a telephone number?”
“I’ll call you.”
“Of course,” he said. “Tomorrow, then, Mrs. Kohl.”
“Tomorrow, Mr. Kiraly.”
Back on Stan’s sofa, she remembered what Kiraly had said. Did she sound like a different person? Maybe. Someone new? Or had she again become last year’s Sophie Kohl, Sofia, who had thrived under Zora’s tutelage?
Yes, but the world was different now, too. She was alone. Zora had disappeared. Emmett was gone. She was in a city that had become even more foreign, for now Hosni Mubarak was holed up in faraway Sharm el-Sheikh. She had felt this on the bus, surrounded by the young and old who, for the first time in memory, were part of the construction of their own society. It didn’t matter that the military was in control; they knew that all it took to change their country was a critical mass of humanity willing to stand in the street. While she could appreciate this, it also scared her, for their newfound power made them that much more menacing.
All she had was Stan. Stan, who had lied to her immediately after her arrival by pretending to know nothing about Zora—but hadn’t he just been covering for himself? It was understandable, and beyond that mistake he seemed to be trying. He was committed.
No, she wasn’t alone, not really, and she could sense his desire when they stood close. She would have to make sure she didn’t lose him.
She had told Emmett the truth: For a week she had thought she might love Stan Bertolli, but that feeling had gone away. Yet she was fond of him, and he was the only thing left to her.
She used his old cell phone to call him. “What have you got?”
“Not much. How about you?”
“I…” she began, then changed tack. “I’ve been dozing in front of the television.”
“Give me another hour, and we’ll talk when I get home.”
When he returned that evening with a takeout bag of grilled chicken, she thought of Zora’s other girl, the one with the long legs who could convince Russian thugs and kleptocrats to give up secrets, but seduction had never been Sophie’s forte. She tried, though, for now she was thinking in terms of practicality, of balances of power, of what Zora had called the push and the pull of seduction. Yet when she focused on Stan, using her eyes, stroking her hair, trying to look dreamy and enthralled, she felt ridiculous, knowing that it wasn’t working.
As he prepared the food, she said, “Did you find out about Jibril Aziz?”
“Not much. Just his position in the Office of Collection Strategies. I sent him an e-mail—maybe he’ll get back to me.”
“No phone number?”
“None.”
That made no sense. “Why not?”
“Sometimes they don’t list numbers. Either they’re changing offices or the section head wants them undisturbed because of a project.”
“How about a wife?” she asked, thinking of what Kiraly had said. “A family?”
“None.”
So not even her gloomy Hungarian spy knew what he was talking about.
As they ate, he told her about Zora—Zora and Emmett and the ways in which Stan had gotten everything so wrong last year, hounding poor Emmett until he had to flee to Budapest. She wanted to cry, knowing it was her fault, but instead she turned it around. Misdirection, Zora called it. “You pretended you’d never heard of her. You lied to me.” Put them on the defensive, always the defensive. It worked, but as he made excuses, she felt the distance between them growing, and another part of her grew frightened: He’s the only one you have, and you’re scaring him away. So she moved to the sofa, knowing he would follow, and he did.
“Where is Zora?” she asked.
“Serbia. She went back home in September.”
Where else?
Then he told her the thing that she would not be able to shake for a very long time. “She told Emmett she was working for the Serbs. That was a lie.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“My Serb contact says that by then she was working for the Egyptians.”
A year, a full year, believing that, if nothing else, she was helping Zora’s people. She hadn’t even been doing that. She’d been feeding everything that Emmett brought home into Hosni’s grand machine. God, she hated Zora. Briefly, she also hated Stan for holding up this cracked mirror.
He went on, though, explaining how he’d put together his fantasy of Emmett’s guilt, then telling her why he hadn’t sent Emmett home. “The disaster is that you would have left, too.”
She didn’t have to do this, she realized. She didn’t have give herself to him tonight. But she had to give herself to someone, and with Zora gone who else was there?
He said, “What did Balašević have on Emmett?”
Misdirection. Now.
She leaned close and placed her head on the side of his chest; he wrapped an arm around her. In her head, she saw a flash o
f dirty leg, spastic, kicking at the damp earth of a musty basement floor. All desire fled her body; the only thing left was survival. When he kissed her neck, she knew it was accomplished.
The first orgasm surprised her. Entirely mechanical, but strong. She’d almost forgotten how good it could be, and the little, shattering explosions transported her elsewhere, to a hard bed in the Hotel Putnik, and a much younger Emmett praying between her legs.
4
1991
On September 20, Sophie and Emmett arrived in Novi Sad desperate for sex, for their rough, seven-hour train ride from Budapest had felt like their first true plunge into authenticity. They’d shared a filthy cabin with a pair of fat old women who ate cheese sandwiches and eyeballed them, and as they waited at the border wailing Gypsies swelled outside their window, reaching up to sell them T-shirts, cassettes, bottled water, and toys. The Hungarian border guards seemed to be waiting for bribes, shooting them looks of scorn as they rifled through their papers, so by the time they crossed into Yugoslavia they were expecting trouble. Yet they received none: The Yugoslav soldiers gathered around to hear their American voices, one telling of a cousin in Chicago, another sternly advising them to mix bad wine with Coca-Cola for a perfect evening drink. Toothy grins surrounded them as the young conscripts pushed in to get a glimpse of the West.
This was when the arousal flickered in them both, and by the time they reached the high marble-and-concrete lobby of the Novi Sad train station, bought dinars at official rates from a surly clerk, and haggled for a noisy taxi ride to the center of town, they were famished for it. They didn’t notice the haughtiness of the desk clerk or the mustached secret policeman watching them from behind a copy of Politika or even the scratches on the inside of their door that, had they been in the mood to notice, would have made them think that someone had been imprisoned in the room for a very long time. They weren’t in the mood to look around at anything in Milošević’s Yugoslavia, not even checking the nighttime view from their window until afterward, when Emmett, naked and satisfied, pulled back the heavy, dusty curtains to look down on a tree-lined street full of sleepy taxis under the tungsten glare.
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